2 mins
PIETRO GALLINOTTI
A close look at the work of great and unusual makers
Pietro Gallinotti was born in 1885 in Solero, a village in the Piedmont region of north-west Italy, about halfway between Genoa and Turin. He apprenticed as a cabinet maker, and according to legend his first encounter with instrument making came during his time as a prisoner in the First World War, when he was ordered to build a violin. In the years immediately following the war, Gallinotti spent time in Genoa, where he was no doubt influenced by Genoese makers such as Cesare Candi, who all worked in a characteristic Ligurian style. He embarked on a career as a violin maker on his return to Solero and remained there until his death in 1979 aged 94, making him one of history’s very long-lived violin makers.
Gallinotti was an unusually talented luthier and won a range of awards, starting with a silver medal for a violin at the 1927 Exposition Nationale de Musique in Geneva. Like Candi and another Genoese maker, Enrico Rocca, his enthusiasms were divided between making plucked instruments – especially guitars – and those of the violin family. He continued entering instruments in various Italian exhibitions throughout the 1930s, the most prestigious being the 1937 Cremona Exhibition and Competition, in which he entered a violin and a viola. His finest works, based on either ‘Il Cannone’ by Guarneri ‘del Gesù’ or the golden-period Stradivari models, date from between the mid-1920s to the mid-1940s. After c.1950 the quality of his output declined substantially: his varnish loses its deep hues and oil content; the arching becomes simpler and, while his purfling remains neatly inlaid, it is overly wide. Perhaps such instruments were made for him by an assistant, while Gallinotti himself returned to the less challenging production of plucked instruments.
MAKER PIETRO GALLINOTTI
NATIONALITY ITALIAN
BORN 1885
DIED 1979
INSTRUMENT VIOLIN
DATE 1929
FORM AND CONSTRUCTION
Despite his little-known name, until the later 1940s Gallinotti produced some of the best-crafted and arguably most interesting instruments of the post-1920 period. One such example, based on the golden-period Stradivari model, is this 1929 violin. The model is the maker’s personal take on the Stradivari forms. Compared to some of Gallinotti’s other models, this violin has a wider waist and shorter f-holes. The arching is relatively flat, particularly in the middle section. In this respect it pays tribute to the violins of the Roccas.
This violin confirms Gallinotti’s signature perfectionism and virtuoso technique, with its subtly raised edges and flutings, as well as the carefully inlaid purfling. The characteristically elegant, rounded scroll is also typical of his making from his finest period.
VARNISH
The oil varnish is superb, a glowing, reddish-brown colour, generously applied on a yellow ground. The hue is not normally seen on Ligurian, Piedmontese or Milanese instruments of the period; rather it is reminiscent of some varnishes of the Raffaele Fiorini and Pollastri school of Bologna. The texture of the varnish is also quite pasty, recalling that of Giovanni Francesco Pressenda, with its generous layers just penetrating the wood enough to show off its inherent beauty.