The Medici Tenor Viola by Stradivari
Antonio Stradivari (about 1644 to 1737) · 1690
The instrument in this case is one of the most perfectly preserved objects Antonio Stradivari ever made. In sixteen ninety, Grand Prince Ferdinando de' Medici, heir to the throne of Tuscany and a passionate musician, ordered a set of five string instruments from the workshop in Cremona: two violins, two violas and a cello, known as the Medici quintet. This tenor viola is the only one that has never left Florence, and because it was too large and awkward for later players it was almost never used, so its varnish, its fittings and its shape are exactly as they left Stradivari's hands.
Look at the decoration. The edges are inlaid with ebony and ivory in a chain of tiny circles and diamonds, a pattern Stradivari reserved for his rarest commissions, and the scroll is carved with the same precision. On the tailpiece, in mother of pearl, is the Medici coat of arms. The orange-red varnish, which on most Stradivari instruments has been worn away by three centuries of playing, still glows. The size is unusual: a tenor viola, tuned lower than the modern instrument, was built to fill out the middle of a consort and was already going out of fashion when this one was made.
Ferdinando's music collection passed to the Lorraine grand dukes and then to the conservatory of Florence, and it forms the core of the museum's fifty or so instruments. Nearby you will find the earliest surviving piano by Bartolomeo Cristofori, who worked for the same prince and invented the instrument in his Florentine workshop. Together they tell the story of a court where music mattered as much as painting.
Did You Know? Because the tenor viola was too big to be fashionable, it was hardly ever played, which is why its original varnish survives almost untouched.
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