Modern violins are better than 300-year-old ones
FOR a work of art by a genius, $16m might not seem an outrageous price. And that is what is believed to have been paid, in 2012, for the Vieuxtemps Guarneri—a violin made in the 18th century, in Cremona, Italy, which thus became the most expensive fiddle in the world. The Vieuxtemps’s owner remains anonymous, but he or she has made it available for life to Anne Akiko Meyers, an American violinist pictured playing it.
Violins crafted by members of the Guarneri family and their Cremonese contemporaries, the Stradivari and the Amati, regularly fetch millions, because players like Ms Meyers value them so highly. But a violin is not, by itself, a work of art. It is, rather, a means of creating one—in other words, a piece of technology. An instrument. And for an instrument to be worth that much, it had better be the best in its class.
Unfortunately for the shades of Cremona’s master luthiers, evidence is growing that their…Continue reading
Source: Economist