Violin Forum/Message Board

[Michael Darnton]

No, I don't like that.

[CT Dolan]

I don't know what to think of it, but how did they make it work? Also, why do you suppose this trend seems to appear later in the careers of Stradivari and del Gesu? Being repeated, it would seem it was taking them in a direction they wished to go, but it's anyone's guess if they would have continued down the same path had either had the time to do so.

[Michael Darnton]

I don't see it on any Strads, at least not on Antonio Strads, and only on a few late del Gesus, the ones I personally don't think were made by del Gesu himself. I don't think that it's impossible for it to work, though, but it makes for a different type of violin. The Ole Bull is not an easy violin to play.

[CT Dolan]

"I don't see it on any Strads, at least not on Antonio Strads" - ahhhh, never thought of it that way before! Maybe I read too much...

[CT Dolan]

Michael, why do you think certain late del Gesu's were not made by himself (or, do you suppose they were some point along the way and only certain tasks were finished by another)?

[Michael Darnton]

I believe many were made by his wife, Katarina Guarneri. Roger Hargrave has written about this. Just read his article, and I believe the exact opposite, and can show you why I don't think his position is adequately argued. He discusses the heads, which he gets mixed up, but there's much more to it than that.
http://www.roger-hargrave.de/PDF/Artikel/Strad/Artikel_2000_09_Seeking_MRS_Guarneri_PDF.pdf

[CT Dolan]

I look at the arching and the corners myself, mostly (not having access to instruments to study tool marks, etc), however something very interesting does happen to his arches in the early 1740's, but I always took it down to a maturing of his abilities, and his style (although, I suppose what one really should be looking for is areas in which the treatment is a clear departure from the work of his father, from the training he would have received while under his father's instruction).

[Michael Darnton]

The first thing to know is that the Cannone head looks directly back at the very earliest del Gesu heads, before his father was cutting them, including the cello. That's one of the specific things that attributes the cello to del Gesu: the head.

The del Gesu (himself) scrolls, early and late, are blocky and the first turn comes quickly away from the eye, unlike his father who stayed very close, and subsequent turns consequently are also too wide from the eye, continuing the idea. This is a careful carver who didn't want to overshoot his goal, and stopped cutting early. The Cannone head is similar in almost all respects, including being carefully worked, to the early ones in this respect--the ones before there was a Katarina Guarneri. . .

Del Gesu was an exquisite workman, with a good sense of design. Smooth lines, careful edgework, a high level of finish made almost directly off the tool without a whole lot of scraping, etc. The violins from the mid-30s demonstrate this, as does the Cannnone.

The kink in the "del Gesu" output is an unskilled, untrained set of hands connected to bad observation skills that show up in the 40s. Lumpy outlines (the only Cremonese maker who left multitudes of bumps around the outline, in fact), broken purfling, bumpy edgework, the wild, crudely-carved heads AND f-holes. This is not the work of del Gesu, in my opinion, because it's not the work of a skilled workman with a good eye. It's also visually totally unrelated to del Gesu's own style. It's someone new, who didn't really know how to make a violin, was basically an amateur and crude. Who cut at scrolls until there wasn't anything left and she had to quit, leaving them ugly. These "bad" violins are interspersed among "good" ones. No maker changes his whole style, every point, so much, and instantly, between violins, even if one could suppose some sort of illness might account for a lessening of tool skill.

This idea is supported by the personality of the one posthumous instrument, which is mostly that maker, not del Gesu.

[Roger Hill]

Hi Michael:

Would you mind naming a few of the later del Gesus ('40's+) which are truly that, i.e. by the master himself, not a collaboration with wife plus father. I would like to study pictures of them vs the ones you don't care for. Any in the Hill's book on the Guarneris would be a nice place to start. Thanks,

Roger Hill

[Roger Hill]

Hi Michael:

Would you mind naming a few of the later del Gesus ('40's+) which are truly that, i.e. by the master himself, not a collaboration with wife plus father. I would like to study pictures of them vs the ones you don't care for. Any in the Hill's book on the Guarneris would be a nice place to start. Thanks,

Roger Hill

[Roger Hill]

Hi Michael:

Would you mind naming a few of the later del Gesus ('40's+) which are truly that, i.e. by the master himself, not a collaboration with wife plus father. I would like to study pictures of them vs the ones you don't care for. Any in the Hill's book on the Guarneris would be a nice place to start. Thanks,

Roger Hill

[Roger Hill]

Hi Michael:

Would you mind naming a few of the later del Gesus ('40's+) which are truly that, i.e. by the master himself, not a collaboration with wife plus father. I would like to study pictures of them vs the ones you don't care for. Any in the Hill's book on the Guarneris would be a nice place to start. Thanks,

Roger Hill

[Michael Darnton]

You can find them yourself; I've told you what to look for. But don't make the mistake of calling them the ones I don't care for: they're some of the very most desirable and valuable ones. I think the "experts" refuse to look because they can't admit one of the greatest violin makers of all time was a girl.

[Roger Hill]

sorry about the multiple posts. The software never acknowledged my post so I kept trying.

[Janito]