In Focus: A 1669 Andrea Guarneri cello

This article appeared in the November 2016 issue

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This instrument features in the book In Focus 2: click here to buy a copy

Andrea Guarneri came to live in the household of Nicolò Amati (1596–1684) at least by 1641, when he was in his late teens – about the typical age that a northern Italian boy would enter an apprenticeship. He was the first non Amati family member we know of in three generations to be a professional violin maker in Cremona. Nicolò had become head of the Amati family workshop about a decade earlier, after the plague had decimated Cremona and taken his father, Girolamo. By 1641 Amati’s fame had spread throughout Europe generating a demand for instruments that exceeded the capabilities of the immensely gifted master. Nicolò’s violin maker son, also named Girolamo, was not born for another eight years.