1.30pm, 24th June 2013

24 th June 2013John Dilworth writes:This beautiful violin, with its original label stating ‘Andreas Guarnerius fecit Cremonae / sub tituloSanctae Teresiae 1684’ is fully characteristic of the Guarneri workshop at this time. Andrea himself wasthen a grand old man of 61, a pupil and supporter of Nicolo Amati and a senior member of the smallgroup of luthiers that had already established Cremona as the world centre of violin making. FrancescoRugeri, his senior by three years, and the great Antonio Stradivari were active, but not necessarily partof the Amati circle. Only Nicolo, who died in the year this violin was made, or his son Hieronymus IIwould have outranked Andrea in any sort of luthiers guild. Guarneri also had two sons to continue hisworkshop and preserve the family name under the sign of St Theresa in the Piazza San Domenico. Butthe eldest, Pietro, had left home in about 1677 to work in Venice, leaving only Giuseppe, the youngerson, to assist. In 1684, Giuseppe was eighteen years old, and probably quite experienced in his father’scraft. It can be assumed that his hand is present in some degree to most of the work bearing Andrea’slabel from around 1680, as his father worked through old age to his final year of 1698, when he died atthe age of 75. However, his activity in the later years was probably limited, and the Hills give evidenceof work labelled independently by Giuseppe as early as 1690, only six years after this violin wascompleted, and by which time the younger man’s own style was fully formed. Giuseppe later becameknown as Giuseppe ‘filius Andrea’ in order to distinguish him from his son, the great Giuseppe Guarneridel Gesu, but his own achievement as a violin and cello maker is of course substantial.sufficient remains to fully harmonise the instrument. As with the back, the wood is not of the mostoutstanding quality, the grain is a little broad and slightly wavering, but is good alpine spruce, given astrong, stable arching. The soundholes are beautifully poised and certainly reflect the style of Andrea,freely cut, open, rather slanted across the front, the nicks emphatic and the lower wings deftly fluted.The scroll is a definitive piece, charming and forceful, a slightly impressionistic version of the Amatiprototype. It sums up Andrea’s workmanship entirely; faithful absolutely to the principals, methodsand proportions of his teacher Nicolo, but rendered with more freedom, or perhaps just less finesse.The distinctly ‘comma shaped’ eye identifies Guarneri work, and seems to have gradually developed inthe cutting of the last turn, to the point where the broad tail seems to overwhelm the diminished eyein the very last scrolls made by Giuseppe ‘filius Andrea’.The varnish is a beautiful pale golden brown, wholly transparent and supple, but rather over polishedthrough time and continued use and upkeep over three hundred years.This violin is a superb and characteristic example of the Guarneri workshop in this period. The backhas a full, luxuriously rounded arch springing from a small but emphatically worked edge channel, withtypically delicate margins. The wood is a little plain, as is often the case, but it is a flawless piece cutfrom matched quarter sawn halves. The purfling is a little ragged, compared with the flawless workof Amati and Stradivari, and entirely typical, although the very distorted points seen on Andrea’s earlywork, where the tip of the purfling mitre is deflected sharply across the corner, have evolved into alonger, straighter, if still somewhat unsteady tip.On the table, some of the original purfling has been lost to repair work on the exposed edges, but20 21