An absolutely stunning Italian violin made in Brescia around 1700, possibly by a member of the Pasta family. The violin is a prime example of Brescian violin making tonally and visually, with a distinct outline, arching and edgework very characteristic of the location and period.

Tonally the violin is impressive in all areas, quite stunning. It has a very dark, characterful lower end, with an Italian core; clear and precise all over, with sweet overtones at the top. Simply a tone that has developed and matured over the past 320 years to make it the instrument it is today.

The back, ribs and scroll are original, the front being a later 19th century addition.

About The Pasta Family:

Gaetano Pasta is a fascinating maker who followed in the course of the Rogeris. He was born in Milan in about 1679, a son of Bartolomeo Pasta. Bartolomeo, like Giovanni Battista Rogeri, was a pupil of Nicolò Amati in Cremona in 1660. In 1673 he settled in Milan, where his sons Christoforo, Domenico and Gaetano were born and worked as violin makers (although no instruments by Christoforo are recorded).

Gaetano moved to Brescia in about 1694, and his work is so strongly influenced by Rogeri that it is no stretch to assume that they worked together in some way. On his own labels, however, he calls himself ‘Milanese, allievo dell Amati di Cremona’. His style is of the less refined manner of Rogeri, the detail crude and the purfling sometimes scratched rather than inlaid, but the outline and modelling is fine, robust and classical.