Stradivari Museum

The history of the Stradivarian Museum began in 1893, the year in which the town of Cremona accepted Giovanni Battista Cerani's donation of moulds, patterns and various tools that had belonged to Cremonese violin makers, including some of Antonio Stradivari's. In 1895 a contribution by Pietro Grulli expanded the first donation, adding four wooden closing clamps of Stradivarian origin. But the most significant part of the Museum is represented by the artefacts originating from the collection of Ignazio Alessandro Cozio, Count of Salabue. Born in 1755, he is considered to be the first great violin making scholar. Purchasing what remained of Stradivari's workshop, Alessandro Cozio was able to foster the great interest he had always shown in violin making and he soon became a personage of rare competence on the subject. The Salabue Collection, composed of wooden moulds, paper patterns and various tools which had been used for the construction of violins, violas, cellos and other instruments, was finally sold in 1920 by the last heir to Cozio, the Marchioness Paola Dalla Valle del Pomaro, to the Bolognese violin maker Giuseppe Fiorini for the sum of 100,000 lire. Prior to being donated to the Municipality of Cremona, this priceless collection was studied in great depth by Simone Fernando Sacconi, who was still in Italy at that time. Sacconi reorganised all the objects in the collection, giving accurate information on the use of each one. Fiorini was faced with numerous difficulties in trying to set up an Italian school of violin making which could avail itself of this precious material. After several attempts in different Italian towns, Giuseppe Fiorini donated the entire collection of artefacts emanating from the great Cremonese violin maker to Cremona's Municipal Museum in April 1930. On 26 October 1930 the senator Alfredo Rocco, at that time Minister of Justice, inaugurated the Stradivarian Room in the Palazzo Affaitati, that had only recently become the seat of the Muncipal Museums, where the Salabue- Fiorini Collection was exhibited together with the items from the previous donations. After moving from its original location to the Palazzo dell'Arte, the Stradivarian Museum returned to the Palazzo Affaitati, only to be transferred to the rooms once occupied by the State Archives in Via Palestro in 1979. Since 13 December 2001 the Museum has been definitively housed in the noble, eighteenth-century rooms of the Palazzo Affaitati.
The Museum is organised in three sections:
• an itinerary that explains the construction of a contralto viola in accordance with the tradition of the classical Cremonese school; the equipment for the contralto viola of 1690 was chosen for this first section, as it is one of the most complete sets among those kept within the museum; the itinerary has also been studied and organised for the blind and those with poor eyesight;
• the group of instruments which represents mainly Italian violin makers active from the second half of the 19th century to the first half of the 20th century;
• the Salabue-Fiorini Collection, displayed in sixteen showcases containing 710 artefacts, originating from the workshop of Antonio Stradivari.
Within the project 'Friends of Stradivari' has been promoted a project of "hospitality" of important historical instruments of the Cremonese violin making belonging to private collections. Among the first to join the project, the heirs of Sau Wing Lam and Si-Ma-Hon. Then the Henry Ford Museum and the Royal Academy of Music in London.

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(19257) letture dal 26-06-2007 - Data ultima modifica: 04-04-2013 -