Violins and Violinists

Art & Music

Art and music have always sat closely together, and often we can find evidence in other art forms that either directs us towards a solution, backs a hypothesis, and in the best of all circumstances gives us the answer. All that aside, it’s a wonderful world to deep-dive into. Understanding the synergies between instrument making, performance and the artistic world that it orbited enriches our understanding of instrument makers of the past. 

Hogarth and the Senses: Music at William Hogarth’s House, my virtual musical exhibition.

For six months in 2025, Hogarth’s House in Chiswick is hosting a wonderful exhibition in...

Vitruvian Man, the braccio, the gamba and the beginning of the violin.

In the last twenty years François Denis’ Traite de Lutherie has revolutionised the way that we...

Michelangelo, Marco Girolamo Vida and some art-historical foundations for Andrea Amati…

A long read: We tend to fall into the idea of Andrea Amati and the invention of the violin as happening in...

Andrea Amati, the Campi family and the artistic milieu of 16th Century Cremona.

At length, I hope to write more on my interest in the lyric and narrative poets of Cremona in the early...

Josquin in England: Some additional notes.

Some years ago in 2010, I was invited to examine a Tudor-period English painting by the anonymous Master of...

Nicolo Paganini: George Patten’s 1832 Preparatory Study from Life.

A chance find in a German sale-room proved to be a little better than the auctioneer had suggested…...

Ekphrasis, the Paragone and baroque violin playing…

How music should be seen but not heard in paintings, and its implications for understanding musical...

Carl Friederich Abel, Ann Ford and Thomas Gainsborough…. “that” viol revealed.

Every few years viol players in England return with the same question, asking what the viol is in the...

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