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A change of scale: ‘Sainton’ Guarneri ‘del Gesù’ violin c.1744

2026-11-13T10:00:00

Sainton_Fullview_Front

Expert and conservator Balthazar Soulier and ESRF beamline scientist Paul Tafforeau explore the c.1744 ‘Sainton’ violin by Guarneri ‘del Gesù’, showing how synchrotron phase-contrast microtomography has revealed previously inaccessible evidence of the maker’s working methods

Few violins by Guarneri ‘del Gesù’ have been in the public eye for as long as the ‘Sainton’. As early as 1885, Edward Heron-Allen included outlines of its back, f-holes and scroll in his influential book Violin-Making: As It Was and Is, in what may be considered the first published plan of a ‘del Gesù’. Though schematic and approximate, these full-size templates offered generations of makers a rare insight into the Cremonese master’s late model – even if 19th-century connoisseurs such as Eugène Gand and Georges Chanot II probably misread the date on the label, placing the instrument in 1734…

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