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Posted (edited)

What's the total amount of stringed instruments attributed to Andrea Amati that survive today?

 

According to the Metropolitan Museum website "eight small and large violins, three violas, and five violoncellos are all that survive. Eight of these bear the coat of arms of Charles IX of France, and so were probably completed before the French king's death in 1574. (The authenticity of these instruments has recently been challenged, possibly making authenticated instruments by Andrea Amati even more scarce.)"

 

According to a wikipedia article a set of instruments could have been made for the marriage of king Philip II of Spain with Elisabeth of Valois on 1559. Is that possibly true? Both Charles IX and Elisabeth of Valois were sons of Catherine de Medici and according to an article written by Roger Hargrave (refering to the Charles IX instruments only) "Catherine de Medici was a Florentine. She was the daughter of Lorenzo de Medici, Duke of Urbino. (The Medici family, being one of the most powerful political forces in Florence and Tuscany, not only married into many royal families of Europe, but financed them.) It is known that when Catherine married King Henry II of France, she brought with her musicians and dancers from Italy. Over the years she promoted poetry, music and movement at the French court and much of this was performed or inspired by Italian artists, notably her director of court festivals, Baltazarmi di Belgioso. Such people may have been responsible for ordering the instruments from Andrea."

Edited by bcncello
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Posted

Given that Andrea and his household were breaking relatively new ground with the modern violin family I would be surprised if they were not also making and supplying other instruments to hedge their market share? Anyone aware of such things, just as Stradivari made the occasional lute, mandolin, guitar or harp?

Posted

Karel Moens, a one-time curator at the Brussels Musical Instrument museum wrote several articles where he claimed that Andrea Amati violins, as well as anything else in terms of 16th-century Italian stringed instrument making was all fake, built in the 19th century for the benefit of collectors.

 

His major paper (although there are several) was “Problems of Authenticity of Sixteenth Century Stringed Instruments” CIMCIM Newsletter XIV, 1989. The one that is easiest to get hold of is his essay in “Violons Vuillaume” published by the Musee de la Musique in ?1998?. In acadumber circles, his works have been cited so often that you ended up banging your head against the wrong end of a gouge every tie some university musicologist raises the issue. You see a lot of the emotional scarring of this in “Un Corpo alla ricerca d’alla anima Andrea Amati…” where the authors try to deal with the heavy academic burden of having to sidestep the ravings of a respected member of the museum curatorial field. More recently it appears in the monolithic “The Violin: A Skewed History” characteristically describing Moens as the “Avenging Angel” who puts truth against the conspiracies of the violin world (pp13-15), and roundly ignores all the evidence of the two exhibitions in Cremona and the one (which the author attended) in South Dakota, where these instruments were properly looked at - Let’s not put updated research in the way of a good story, eh? –

 

In particular Moens used the evidence of Benjamin de la Borde's "Essai sur la musique ancienne et moderne" (1780)  and its descriptions of the Charles' IX set as the basis of proof that French conspirators had invented a myth that gave France claim as the nation that created the violin. To be more scupulously fair than I would wish to be, the French were extremely interested in laying claim to the invention of the violin in the 19th-century, and had he directed his research towards Vuillaume, and the legends of Gaspard Duiffprougcar and Joan Karlino, he would (and to an extent did) find very fertile ground to back up his thesis. However he decided to go after the Amatis instead and ignore various problems including the apparent mismatch in chronology (if this was responding to a phenomenon that existed before la Borde had his head chopped off in 1794, what on earth does it have to do with Vuillaume more than a generation later?).

 

There is a possibility that he was confronted by fakes in the storerooms of the various museums that he had access to which may have had provenances that he considered plausible, in which case that’s fair enough (although none of his work on 16th century viols all being fake has stood any real scrutiny), and in the main he never revealed his sources. However, when it got to the instruments in the Ashmolean and other places where Andrea Amati instruments authenticated by violin experts can be found, he was so convinced of his thesis that he wasn’t interested in anything else. His analysis of them is shambolic and weak. Of course there are fake Andrea Amatis around but these don't appear to be the ones that he had access to. The old Cozio site dredged up a few appalling things which are in the Jacques Francais archive, but they were completely tangential to mainstream knowledge. Machold discovered the cello – now in the Austrian National Bank – which was never thought to be genuine except when he sold it. There are other painted instruments knocking around that have the appearance of being very old “fakes” but those that I have seen, tend to have the arms of later French kings, so were obviously genuinely made a century or so later, and provide more evidence – if evidence were needed - of a culture of these instruments at an early point in history. What he categorically failed to do, was to compare Andrea Amati's to anything later in Amati's history (which you can do at the Ashmolean, RAM, Met, Chi-Mei, or Cremona or South Dakota) in which case, he would have been confronted with the manifest and obvious similarities that make Andrea's work obviously that of the Amati family, and obviously a little more primitive than anything that's less primitive from the family. It doesn't really need explanation or justification when you look at it like that.

 

The Opera Omnia exhibition and book did an extraordinarily good job of getting together everything that was out there. There are a few things on the cusp of being brother’s Amati – like the Ex-Trampler viola, which might on balance have a little more to say about Andrea, but that’s a very philosophical view rather than one with practical or economic implications. I remember seeing a cello in the USA that was for sale back in 1998-9, and I’ve heard of bits of at least another cello and another viola that didn’t make it into the book.

Posted

Ben-thanks alot for that post. I've been deeply troubled by Moens' articles ever since i first came across them, as I felt he raised several legitimate concerns. In the Vuillaume exhibition book, his essay starts from the obviously bogus " Duiffoprugar" case, goes to the equally ridiculous "Kerlino" claims then slices into the Andrea Amati legend in a way that shook my fundamental beliefs. I am still troubled by the lack of contemporary documentation, and that historical proof remains rather circumstancial, but you remind us all that, if no one can point to a legitimate Duiffoprugar or Kerlino violin, there is a very real and visible body of work that can stylistically be seen as the pre-cursor to the more abundant, accepted and documented body of later Amati work. I'm still a little sceptic about the legends concerning the Charles IX "Violons du Roi," but the violins themselves tell a compelling story, no matter for whom they were made or when and where they were painted.

Posted

I have an interesting paper titled :Reconstitution d'un violoncelle d'Andrea Amati by Roland Houel the pdf which he invited me to unlock on contacting him. This has some interesting analysis and comparison of details between different instruments and is generally nicely presented with many thoughts about authenticity and the Moens controversy. I promised not to pass it on so you will need to contact him personally to ask for it.

This is a link to his website:

http://www.rolandhouel.fr/

Posted

Peter, I'm pretty convinced that the RCM instrument was "the Kerlino" - in as much as it was the instrument that was used in the 19th century as the example of "his" work. Moen's ideas in Violons Vuillaume about it being an anagram  or likening of Koliker, the Parisian violin dealer seem to me to be stretching things a little bit too much into laah-laah-land. You know about the dendro of this (well you did it) but there are three issues which have obfuscated it somewhat.

 

1) It looks as if it has pretty classic French "antiquing"  - however, there are other examples as well as this in which very pure instruments have been "antiqued" in the 19th century to make them look the age that they are (more likely to be) rather than looking outstandingly pure. The Alard Nicolo Amati (as you can see in the UV pictures in the Stradivari Varnish book) is an example of this.

 

2) The instrument was taken - as Kerlino - to an exhibition of Ancient Musical Instruments in Vienna in the 1880s. There is a photograph of it, and thus it seems to confirm that this was the instrument was the "genuine" example known to 19th century scholar. 

 

3) There is a nascent provenance of this instrument. Rather famously, Elizabeth Wells the curator used to corner  experts after concerts at the RCM and ask for opinions. Whilst the answer was usually "I need to come along and spend some time with the instruments", if they made any off the cuff statements, she wrote them down in her notepad. All of a sudden there was pressure to publish the catalogue and these "comments" rather than "attributions" got codified into representations of fact to the absolute frustration of many people who had patiently given their time for free. I actually remember the curator telling me it was a Chanot because C.B. had said so, but this got somehow warped to Panormo by the time the catalogue was published. In fact, there is a footnote in an English translation of Neiderheitmann's "Cremona", congratulating Chanot on his copy of the Kerlino instrument - suggesting that Chanot copied something else, and didn't make it. In fact, I sold what was probably the copy, labelled as such, as a cut-down viola at Christie's NY back in about 2007. The label made specific reference to it being a copy of the Kerlino exhibited at the South Kensington Exhibition in 1872. Quarrel's translation of Cremona mentions "the Carlino or Kerlino tenor of 1452, exhibited at South Kensington in 1872, which has been finely copied by Mr Georges Chanot". The copy once again confirms the status of the RCM instrument as being the one considered genuine in 1872 (where J.B.Vuillaume was the guest curator overseeing stringed instruments).

 

 

I know that both you and I had expressed our opinions to the museum of what it actually is some years before someone else independently published the same conclusions in the Strad. I've just looked over our own emails on this from back in 2010!

 

In conclusion the RCM instrument is a 16th-century Veneitan lira da braccio which was relabelled in the 19th century (and given a bit of a dusting to look old) to become the 1452 Kerlino. Because it spent most of the 20th century with an improbable attribution the museum community continue to see it as nothing other than a 19th century fake.

Posted

Thank you for the great post, Ben! I was going to simply apologize that I haven't actually seen it, and in anycase, I have far from enough experience observing such early instruments to have any sort of meaningful opinion, other than perhaps recognizing 19thc. french work.

Gentlemen, the last thing I read about dendro and the Andrea Amatis was a rather general summary in John Dilworth's 2005 Strad article mentioning John Topham's tests in a vague but positive way. Are there any more recent, more detailed findings?

Posted

Ben-thanks alot for that post. I've been deeply troubled by Moens' articles ever since i first came across them, as I felt he raised several legitimate concerns. In the Vuillaume exhibition book, his essay starts from the obviously bogus " Duiffoprugar" case, goes to the equally ridiculous "Kerlino" claims then slices into the Andrea Amati legend in a way that shook my fundamental beliefs. I am still troubled by the lack of contemporary documentation, and that historical proof remains rather circumstancial, but you remind us all that, if no one can point to a legitimate Duiffoprugar or Kerlino violin, there is a very real and visible body of work that can stylistically be seen as the pre-cursor to the more abundant, accepted and documented body of later Amati work. I'm still a little sceptic about the legends concerning the Charles IX "Violons du Roi," but the violins themselves tell a compelling story, no matter for whom they were made or when and where they were painted.

 

Michael, thanks :)

 

I think that one of the fundamental mistakes in Moens' work was to assume that the violins of Andrea Amati were still in the Royal Court up until the Revolution, whereupon they were dispersed. This makes it all the stranger that they should all need to be faked within 50 years of their dispersal, but there are many inconsistencies that don't quite stack up.

 

In terms of paintings:

 

I think it's fair to divide the instruments from the paintings. There are at any rate fake or otherwise wrong paintings on Amati instruments from the early 19th century - the Viola Crossificio on display at Cremona has - to my mind - identical paintings to the 1816 Lupot in the Ashmolean, and there are horrible paintings on the Nicolo Amati in the Metropolitan Museum of Art from when it was used as a conservatoire prize in the 19th century. The French did like decorating new instruments at that period, and this seems to be one of the issues that may be at the heart of Moens' paranoia.

 

 

However, the discourse in works including Opera Omnia about the decoration of the Charles IX Amatis, and others of similar age has been focussed on who painted them, and not where the designs come from. In fact, the prototype for the mannerist designs can all be found in the surviving work of the Fountainbleu school i.e. the mannerist method of painting that emerged as a result of the French commission to redecorate the palace at Fountainbleu from the 1540s onwards. Antoine Caron is the leading French figure in this movement, and his paintings from the 1560s incorporate virtually every design and motif that is also found on Andrea Amati’s instruments – though these are as unique in painting as they are on violins. This does not exclude the likelihood that instruments were painted in Cremona, but suggests strongly that the designs were derived from prototypes sent over by the French court. There are several reasons why Caron may be a pivotal figure in a French dialogue about the band of violins in the reign of Charles IX. But for purposes of this discussion, comparison of his iconographical schema to the violins provides an extra layer of very strong and credible evidence to support the authenticity of these violins. (This in no way contradicts their research, I'm interested in the designer, they are interested in the painter. I think Opera Omnia is a brilliant work).

 

In terms of objects.

 

The French court doesn’t seem to have been very precious about their instruments in the seventeenth century. Why would they be when the Amati workshop was constantly making new ones, and they had the financial resources to renew instruments whenever they needed. One thing that does emerge from English sources is the preparedness for the French court to offload their Cremonese instruments whenever the English turned up.

 

Hence, there are two key receipts in the Lord Chamberlain’s accounts of the English court. On April 20 1634, a warrant was made to pay the French violinist Estienne Nau £24 ‘for two tenor violins brought out of France’, and on 4 March 1637/8 another warrant of £12 was paid ‘to Mr. Francis de la France, one of his Majesty’s musicians for the violins, for a treble violin bought by him for his Majesty’s service’. At least one of these was definitely taken out of France: The other shows a French musician with regular access to France able to supply an instrument at a Cremonese price. It should be noted that these receipts correspond with the Plague in Northern Italy, suggesting that French surplus may have become an alternative supply at a time when violins were unobtainable from Cremona.

 

A third source dates from 24 October 1662: Lord Chamberlain to Treasury of the Chamber: Warrant to pay £40 to John Bannister for two Cremona violins bought by him for His Majesty’s service, and £10 for strings for two whole years ending 24 June 1662.

 

This has high significance for two reasons – the first because this receipt is submitted on Bannister’s return to England having been sent to Paris by Charles II to study with J.B. Lully. The second is that this is a vast price to pay for two Cremona violins, which typically would have cost between £8-12 each according to other receipts of the Lord Chamberlain’s office. It’s likely  - though not completely provable – that he was returning with extraordinarily fine violins bought during his tenure in Paris.

 

The last and rather crucial evidence is in the 1564 violin in the Ashmolean and the 1574 in the NMM. By the endpin on both are the initials W.C. for William Corbett.  In fact the Hills back in 1904 mention their awareness of the W.C. brand, and of knowing several violins with it, but it is unclear if they knew of his will and inventory  of 1748, which mentions both the 1564 and 1574 (it says that the 1574 is “painted”, the 1564 not, which is the wrong way around, but there are many indications that it is a confused death-bed will, and it’s not an earth-shattering mistake because it can be rationally accounted for). If we take the brand alone (without the documents) it is nevertheless incredibly good physical documentation that the instrument was out of the French court and in the hands of an Englishman 50 years before the French revolution! It turns a lot of Moens’ assumption on it’s face.

 

There are various other sources that knock away at these assumptions. The Chevalier de St George supposedly paid a huge price for one of them before the revolution. I'm not certain what the source for this is. But others are a little more difficult to pin down as anything more than heresay or supposition.

Posted

I had no idea so much documentation existed on the English side. That does reinforce the "traditional" narrative quite a bit; The instruments are what they are, and the links between the Medicis, Charles IX and Cremona have been documented, so that even if detailed inventories of royal instruments have not been found in France, concluding that it's all a hoax is probably an exageration. Thanks again for all of the information, Ben.

Posted

Gentlemen, the last thing I read about dendro and the Andrea Amatis was a rather general summary in John Dilworth's 2005 Strad article mentioning John Topham's tests in a vague but positive way. Are there any more recent, more detailed findings?

 

Michael,

My link in post 2, takes you to the Strad  February 2012 article about the dendro of some of the Andrea Amati instruments.  I was never happy about how the Strad edited it but I suppose the main information is in there.

I have, I think, data for 11 or 12 remaining violins and violas.

 

Re: Kerlino:

There is more work to be done on this story, but I can tell you that the soundboard of another instrument, now a viola, (formerly a lira da braccio), thought by Charles Beare to have been made by Giovanni Maria of Brescia, was also made from the same log as the RCM "Kerlino".  I therefore cannot dismiss outright the RCM "Kerlino" as a total 19th century fake, although the name itself may well be a fabrication.  But this is either good news for the "Kerlino" OR bad news for the Giovanni Maria! :)
 
As I said there is a lot more work to do, and the scarcity of genuine instruments of this body of work from the early-to-mid sixteenth century means that progress is very slow...,  
Posted

Yes Ben , I thought the NMM  were mentioning something new.

 

Michael, What is your take on the "Kerlino" in RCM? 

 

Edited somewhat:

 

The NMM did buy that fragment of an Andrea Amati viola that was in Tarisio back in 2010. All I have is pictures of the ribs - maybe you have pics of the body... This had an entirely new set of painted decoration. Everything is very fragmentary, the top later and it's bits of back smashed up and stitched together. The ribs have the motto: DONEC TOTUM IMPLEAT ORBEM (Till he replenish the whole world).

 

The motto is of Henri II, but if it was from his reign it would be uncomfortably early (born 1536, reigned 1547-1559, so it would throw a cat amongst the pigeons if we immediately assume that everything is as it should be.

 

From the pictures below, however, I’m convinced that neither the wood or the varnish is right for Amati, which makes things very convenient to me. The opaque red varnish is right for mid-seventeenth-century French work. Fortunately, there are two cellos with this varnish, wood etc, which are painted in a vaguely Andrea Amati-like manner, but with emblems that are distinct for Louis XIV the Sun King – including his over-use of fleur de lis, and happy smiling sun-faces. At least one of them (posted below) also has the DONEC TOTEM motto, as pretty good evidence that it had been recycled by Louis XIV’s court.

 

Heron-Allen (of all people) reports the 19th century opinion of these and similar.. he seems to be spot-on: 

"It was Lully chief of the royal band who was charged with their acquisition They were made and supplied by Medar a fiddle maker at Nancy the violins were oil varnished and stained red of a lighter red however than the violins of Stradivarius They were emblazoned with the arms of Trance and of Navarre with this motto of the great monarch NEC PLURIBUS IMPAR"

 

These are, however incredibly useful pieces of evidence for the continued culture of Andrea Amati’s decorated instruments through the seventeenth-century, long before any conspiracy of collectors and dealers might have emerged.

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Posted

I have to go through my catalogues, but I think a recently discovered Charles IX violin back went through a Paris (Neuilly-Boyer) auction about 20 years ago or so. If I remember correctly, only the back, pieced together though it was, was possibly Andrea Amati.

Posted

Here's are the two DONEC TOTEM IMPLEAT ORBEM cellos, you can clearly see that it's the same kind of wood as the viola's ribs, and there are clear iconographic references to Louis XIV (sun king, etc). Another in the attached pdf. These are good evidence of the continuation of the Charles IX tradition into the 17th century. Obviously these aren't Italian. Someone VERY naive may think they are fake Amatis however.

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Posted

The NMM did buy that fragment of an Andrea Amati viola that was in Tarisio back in 2010. All I have is pictures of the ribs - maybe you have pics of the body... This had an entirely new set of painted decoration. Everything is very fragmentary, the top later and it's bits of back smashed up and stitched together. The ribs have the motto: DONEC TOTUM IMPLEAT ORBEM (Till he replenish the whole world).

 

 

Try Sotheby's Nov.1991 lot 49.  And yes the front is French and made before the butchering (I am not talking about the French revolution)

Posted

 

 

The French court doesn’t seem to have been very precious about their instruments in the seventeenth century. Why would they be when the Amati workshop was constantly making new ones, and they had the financial resources to renew instruments whenever they needed. One thing that does emerge from English sources is the preparedness for the French court to offload their Cremonese instruments whenever the English turned up.

 

 

Ben,

 

Does history record if the violins were supplied along with their magnificent cases?

 

Glenn

Posted

Glenn,

 

I'll give you a slightly long-winded answer, because it might be helpful to other people as well. Musicians at the Royal Court were responsible for buying their own musical instruments and would be reimbursed after they had bought them. Therefore they clearly had to show proof of purchase, or even submit receipts but the only thing that survives are - in effect - the ledger books of expenses paid out by the Lord Chamberlain on behalf of the crown. A few years ago Andrew Ashbee transcribed about six volumes worth of expenses and salaries of musicians from the 16th and 17th centuries, of which I have (somewhere) a complete list of musical instrument transactions. However the LC's books are vast and encompass every possible activity of the court.

 

The sadness, is that all the LC needed to record was the name of the musician, the price reimbursed, and as little other information as possible. The Estienne Nau entry (above) is absolutely remarkable for both qualifying that the instruments were Cremonese and that they were bought in France. In fact only two or three entries specifically mention Cremona violins, though there are consistent values paid throughout the seventeenth-century which allow us to extrapolate that a lot of instruments were bought for Cremonese prices. The sadness is that just one tiny additional layer of accounting, (i.e. "£12 paid to Henry Purcell for a violin by Nicolo Amati bought of John Walsh instrument maker to H.M...") would transform the usefulness of this source. Sadly, that's not to be. If they kept the shoeboxes of receipts from the time, the national record office would be a thousand times bigger. Bows, cases and suchlike are a complete irrelevance to the accountants of yesteryear.

Posted

Glenn,

 

I'll give you a slightly long-winded answer, because it might be helpful to other people as well. Musicians at the Royal Court were responsible for buying their own musical instruments and would be reimbursed after they had bought them. Therefore they clearly had to show proof of purchase, or even submit receipts but the only thing that survives are - in effect - the ledger books of expenses paid out by the Lord Chamberlain on behalf of the crown. A few years ago Andrew Ashbee transcribed about six volumes worth of expenses and salaries of musicians from the 16th and 17th centuries, of which I have (somewhere) a complete list of musical instrument transactions. However the LC's books are vast and encompass every possible activity of the court.

 

The sadness, is that all the LC needed to record was the name of the musician, the price reimbursed, and as little other information as possible. The Estienne Nau entry (above) is absolutely remarkable for both qualifying that the instruments were Cremonese and that they were bought in France. In fact only two or three entries specifically mention Cremona violins, though there are consistent values paid throughout the seventeenth-century which allow us to extrapolate that a lot of instruments were bought for Cremonese prices. The sadness is that just one tiny additional layer of accounting, (i.e. "£12 paid to Henry Purcell for a violin by Nicolo Amati bought of John Walsh instrument maker to H.M...") would transform the usefulness of this source. Sadly, that's not to be. If they kept the shoeboxes of receipts from the time, the national record office would be a thousand times bigger. Bows, cases and suchlike are a complete irrelevance to the accountants of yesteryear.

Thanks Ben,

Awesome scholarship!

There was a practical reason for the question. In a week or two, we will be publishing information (with photo) concerning a case we believe housed one of the 24 Violons du Roi. 

Stay tuned.

Glenn

Posted

I have an interesting paper titled :Reconstitution d'un violoncelle d'Andrea Amati by Roland Houel the pdf which he invited me to unlock on contacting him. This has some interesting analysis and comparison of details between different instruments and is generally nicely presented with many thoughts about authenticity and the Moens controversy. I promised not to pass it on so you will need to contact him personally to ask for it.

This is a link to his website:

http://www.rolandhouel.fr/

http://infoluthier.free.fr/francois%20denis/resources/Reconstitution.pdf
Posted

Been a great thread over all. As others have noted - a lot of scholarship out there relating to these early 'fiddle' years.

 

This picture from a book of Eduard Melkus describing what he calls a 1530 Northern Italian four-stringed instrument comes to mind.

(The concave ribs are an interesting structural feature). It is given as a 40 cm viola de braccio.

 

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Posted

Your photograph, and the black and white from Houel's fascinating bit of work are of the same lira in the Kunsthistoriches Museum. In fact they have a much earlier instrument by Giovanni D'Andrea of Verona with the remarkable date of 1511 - which seems undisputed/undisputable which is a significant precursor of the violin if the date is correct (I don't doubt it). This also has the same rib construction. The National Gallery in a Dublin has a portrait of a musician by Filippino Lippi from about 1480 with many of the same details, including the ribs. There are numerous others, but I think this is a very good example in terms of early date, reliable attribution and indisputable detail:

http://onlinecollection.nationalgallery.ie/view/objects/asitem/id/8882

However I suspect that this is a concurrent design rather than one that is earlier and comes from a slightly different tradition. Curiously these feature in the 1563 Francesco Linarol lira at the NMM even though other Linarol and relatedVenetian instruments have ordinary ribs.

It strikes me that the origin of this rib type probably comes out of instruments made with the ribs, back and neck of one piece. Certainly Urbino citterns from ostensibly the early to mid sixteenth century adopt the idea of creating initially thick ribs and carving them decoratively to lighten the mass of the instrument. The Augustinus Citaroedus cittern of 1582 in the V&A is a good (if late) example:

http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O58649/urbino-cittern-cittern-unknown/

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