Andrea Amati (Italian, ca. 1515–1580)
Italy (Cremona)
Maple, spruce, various other materials
L. 14 in. (35.4 cm)
Purchase, Robert Alonzo Lehman Bequest, 1999 (1999.26)
Amati, earliest of the great Cremonese luthiers, has been credited with defining the violin's elegant form and setting the standard of superb craftsmanship that likewise characterizes the work of his followers, who included two of his sons and his distinguished grandson Nicolo, as well as Antonio Stradivari. The Museum's collections include several violins by Nicolo Amati and Stradivari, but this much older and rare instrument beautifully illustrates the Renaissance origin of the violin's familiar form.
The maple back and sides are decorated with the untraced Latin couplet "Quo unico propugnaculo stat strabiq[ue] religio" (By this bulwark alone religion stands and will stand), perhaps referring to a royal establishment. The motto was that of Catherine de' Medici, wife of King Henri II of France and mother of the future Charles IX. The motto's appearance on this instrument had long been used to associate it with a set of instruments owned by Charles IX; however, recent scholarship has shown that it is more likely to have been part of a set of instruments given as a royal gift from Catherine de' Medici to the marriage of Elisabeth of Valois to King Philip II of Spain. This new evidence, as well as dendrochronological analysis, suggest that the violin may have been made as early as 1558 to celebrate this important union, making it one of the earliest surviving violins.
