Ebook Catalogue of Old Master Violins

Gasparo da Salo, Brescia, 1542-1620, is the first known maker of violins, though this distinction is claimed by German writers for a German at an earlier period and also by French writers for a Frenchman, yet at the present date, no violins earlier than those made by Gasparo da Salo are known to exist, and very few of his. Taking then Gasparo da Salo as the first maker of violins, we have in succeeding years Giovanni Paolo Maggini, Brescia, 1590-1640, a pupil of da Salo's. Contemporaneous with the Brescian makers were those of Cremona, where the violin industry reached such a degree of perfection, that it has excited the wonder of the civilized world to the present day.