Seventeenth-Century Italian Violin Pattern Note: Click on any area of the pattern to see a close-up of that area. NMM T-18.  Violin pattern attributed to a Cremonese workshop, 17th century.  Ex colls.: Count Cozio di Salabue; Giovanni Battista Guadagnini; Antoniazzi family; Bisiach, Milan. Witten-Rawlins Collection, 1984. Provenance The name of Antonio Stradivari and the date, 1737, both written on the pattern, have been attributed to the hand of Count Ignazio Alessandro Cozio di Salabue (1744-1840), the Italian collector who obtained it from Stradivari's son, Paolo, along with Antonio's other papers, patterns, drawings, and tools. Click on any of these three images to see larger versions. According to a history of the violin pattern's provenance, compiled by Leandro Bisiach, Jr. (1904-1982), Salabue loaned the pattern, sometime after 1775, to Giovanni Battista Guadagnini (ca. 1711-1786) who Salabue employed to make copies of Stradivari's instruments. However, Guadagnini never returned the pattern to Salabue. Instead, it eventually wound up in the hands of the Antoniazzi family of violin makers who subsequently sold it to the Bisiach family in Milan at the end of the nineteenth century. Laurence Witten obtained the pattern from the Bisiachs in 1965. Literature:  Euro Peluzzi. Antonio Stradivari ha Parlato. Milan: F.lli Bocca, 1941. Euro Peluzzi. Tecnica Costruttiva degli Antichi Liutai Italiani. Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1978, pp. 118-119. Margaret Downie Banks, "The 'Harrison' Violin, The 'Rawlins' Guitar, and Other Stradivari Materials at the Shrine to Music Museum," Journal of the Violin Society of America, 9, No. 3 (1989), pp. 17-19. National Music Museum The University of South Dakota 414 East Clark Street Vermillion, SD 57069 ©National Music Museum, 2005 Most recent update: October 24, 2007 You are the 8,530th visitor to this page since June 28, 2005. The University of South Dakota Return to Top of Page