Books › The violin: its famous makers and their imitators. : With several wood engravings from photographs of the works of Stradiuarius, Guarnerius, Amati, and others, 1880 › scan 44
Scan 44
The violin: its famous makers and their imitators. : With several wood engravings from photographs of the works of Stradiuarius, Guarnerius, Amati, and others, 1880
4 lines. Read by computer on 29 August 2026. Printed page 30. See the scan on archive.org.
1variations unless we consider the homelier and rougher specimens of Guarnerius as the results of a disturbed mind. Unfortunately, we have no means of procuring biographical knowledge of him, or of the other makers. Were it possible to obtain this, how many curious differences of execution noticeable in many of the productions might be accounted for! Gaspard di Salo, the Amatis, and Stradiuarius were makers who seem to have worked with a singular uniformity and evenness of purpose which has left its mark on their works, so much so indeed as to make it exceedingly difficult to discover an instance where this is not manifested. They certainly made instruments upon which exceptional efforts to finish are to be traced but, at the same time, if their labours be regarded as a whole, workmanlike care can never be said to be absent.
3Judging from the large number of bow-instrument makers in Italy, more particularly during the seventeenth century, we should conclude that the Italians must have been considered as far in advance of the makers of other nations, and that they monopolised, in consequence, the chief part of the manufacture. The city of Cremona became the seat of the trade, and the centre whence, as the manufacture developed itself, other less famous places maintained their industry. In this way there arose ultimately several distinct schools of a character marked and thoroughly Italian, but not attaining the high standard reached by the parent city. Notwithstanding the inferiority of the makers of Naples, Florence, and other homes of the art as compared with the Cremonese, they seem to have received a fair amount of patronage, the
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