Books › Violin tone and violin makers, 1916 › scan 201
Scan 201
Violin tone and violin makers, 1916
6 lines. Read by computer on 27 September 2026. Printed page 179. See the scan on archive.org.
1AND VIOLIN MAKERS
3support this theory. The earliest date found in his admittedly genuine violins is said to be 1723. In that year he would be at least thirty-six years old, and no very satisfactory explanation of the absence of authentic specimens of earlier date seems to be forthcoming, unless we suppose that he did not begin to follow the art in which he was so conspicuously successful until pretty mature manhood. Horace Petherick, in 1906, published a book (illustrated) in which he claimed to have discovered that del Gesù's master was Andrea Gisalberti of Parma (q.v.), a little-known maker of no great account. However, neither Mr. Petherick's arguments, nor the examples by which he strove to support them, were seriously accepted by most judges of the first rank, and the difficulty may be said to be still unsolved. Neither violas nor violoncellos which can unhesitatingly be accepted as the work of del Gesù have come to light. Instruments of both types have from time to time been put forward as authentic, but have been rejected as spurious by all the best-informed authorities.
5Much misapprehension—some at least of which may be traced to general and loosely worded descriptions in books—has existed in regard to the size of del Gesù's larger violins. His more massive looking instruments give the impression of being of greater size than is found on careful measurement to be really the case. The widths are full, but the bodies measure only 13 7/8 inches, or a minute fraction over, in length, and, so far as the writer is aware, no properly verified exception to this rule has as yet appeared. A number of his earlier works are only 13 3/4 inches long, but nevertheless possess a volume of tone which is astonishing, considering the relatively small size of the instrument. It has been customary to classify his works
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