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Requires Photography
English violette (with later alterations)
1725–50
Object Place: Austria or southern Germany
Medium/Technique
Maple, spruce, ebony
Dimensions
Length 84 cm, width 26 cm (Length 33 1/16 in., width 10 1/4 in.)
Credit Line
Leslie Lindsey Mason Collection
Accession Number17.1720a
NOT ON VIEW
CollectionsMusical Instruments
ClassificationsMusical instruments – Chordophones
DescriptionLong model with complicated curved outline. Flat back of maple. Ribs of maple, made of five pieces (two upper bouts, two middle bouts, and a bottom piece). Belly of pine, highly arched (especially under the bridge), purfled at edges; three sound-holes, two flame-shaped ones on both sides of the bridge and a small, comma-shaped one under the finger-board. Short neck with clearance groove for sympathetic strings. Finger-board of ebony. Peg- box without bottom, having only two cheeks; surmounted by a scroll (not original); bored for thirteen pegs. Tail-piece of stained walnut, top cut slantwise, with an ivory reinforcing strip; held by a thick gut-string loop attached to the ebony taip-pin. Two sets of strings affixed as follows: 1. Six playing strings, held by the tail-piece, pass over a movable bridge and an ivory nut to the lower tuning pegs. 2. Seven sympathetic strings of thin steel wire, held by small ivory buttons in the bottom, pass over ebony saddle, over ivroy tipped clearance slit in the bridge, through clearance space under the finger-board, over auxiliary boxwood nut under the main one, to the upper tuning pegs. Inside construction: three cross-bars and cross-strip 4 cm. wide and 3 mm. thick, glued to the bottom; at the lowest incurvation the joints of the middle bouts and the lower ribs are reinforced by large blocks. one on each side; bass-bar and sound-post. Dark reddish-brown varnish.
InscriptionsManuscript label (very faded): Giovan Grancino / Milano, 1696
ProvenanceFrancis W. Galpin (1858-1945), Hatfield Regis, England; 1916, sold by Francis W. Galpin to William Lindsey (1858-1922), Boston, Massachusetts; 1916, gift of William Lindsey, in memory of his daughter, Leslie Lindsey Mason, to the MFA. (Accession Date: October 5, 1916)