The imitation game

In 1927 a cache of documents came to light, purportedly from the Stradivari workshop – and fooled some of the leading experts of the day. Carlo Chiesa explains how the case turned out to be an elaborate forgery

MAKING MATTERS

Points of interest to violin and bow makers

This sample of Antonio Stradivari’s handwriting comes from plans for a sevenstring viola da gamba ‘alla francese’

In the spring of 2020 a friend and colleague contacted me for confidential advice. He had been offered a set of documents from the Stradivari workshop, including original manuscripts by Antonio Stradivari himself! Of course, I would have been more than happy to scrutinise the papers and learn whatever new information was available from them. But it was soon obvious that these documents were already well known to scholars, having been at th presented himself as an artist and sometimes as a restorer, arrived at Leandro Bisiach’s shop in Milan from his home town of Bergamo. Introducing himself under a false name, he offered Bisiach an ancientlooking notebook that had been made by sewing a few sheets of paper together. On the front page was the title The violin and its making, the date 1715 and the name of the author: none other than Antonio Stradivari. Bisiach was immediately convinced, possibly helped by the bargain price of 250 lire, the equivalent of £200 today. The seller claimed to have more documents from the same source, which he could supply, and a few months later Bisiach was the centre of a curious story that ended up in a legal matter almost a hundred years ago.

The story starts in or around the beginning of 1927. A man named Zanardi, who sometimes happy owner of some dozens of documents that were supposed to have originated from the Stradivari workshop, having paid the very nice price of only 2,000 lire. And more and more papers were arriving, including a biography of Stradivari written in 1745 by his friend and spiritual guide, the Jesuit priest T. Bonaventi, letters with orders, thanks and greetings by customers, workshop papers with directions to pupils and workers, and receipts of payment to the same people: a substantial archive consisting of more than 150 documents, perhaps nearly 300. The cost paid had grown up and become remarkable, but absolutely fair compared to what was at stake.

The Bisiachs chose not to show the documents around, to avoid anyone publishing any new information or technical data before them. They went on acquiring papers from Zanardi without calling any serious expert of old manuscripts to confirm their originality. This was a big mistake.

What the Bisiachs ignored, at least for some time, was that Zanardi was also offering similar items to other violin experts and dealers in Europe and the US, but not everyone kept the business as confidential. Rumours spread that new original documents from the old Strad workshop had been discovered, and curiosity grew.

Zanardi was asked to explain where the documents had come from. He said he had found them in a secret part of an old cabinet he was restoring on behalf of a customer and an unpredicted twist arrived: two different men came forward, both claiming to be the original owner of the furniture, and demanding a part of the profit from the manuscripts. One of them filed a complaint with the king’s prosecutor, who in turn started an investigation. By chance, this judge was passionately interested in ancient manuscripts and, to understand the situation better, sequestered all the papers involved. A close look at the documents was enough for him to see through the scam. Zanardi was arrested. The manuscripts were examined by a pool of experts appointed by the tribunal and their verdict left no doubt: the material was forged. A trial followed and Zanardi was sentenced to three years in jail.

NONE OF THE DOCUMENTS LOOKS TO HAVE BEEN WRITTEN BY ANTONIO, OMOBONO OR FRANCESCO STRADIVARI

While some documents were retained by the court, most of them were given back to the Bisiach family. They remained in their hands until they reappeared, some 90 years later, offering us the chance to write this article and tell a nice story in which smartness, naivety, greed and ignorance mixed together to produce unexpected events.

Are all these documents fakes? A correct and final answer would of course need a commission of experts to re-examine all the materials from every point of view with the knowledge and technologies we now have. However, we can safely say something on the matter.

As is well known, all the drawings, models, papers and moulds which were still in the Stradivari workshop when it closed were purchased by Count Cozio di Salabue and are now available to researchers at the Museo del Violino in Cremona. Cozio insisted on taking everything, while the last heirs of Antonio Stradivari were happy to sell even the smallest piece of paper, asking money for every single item they were able to find. This is obvious to anyone who looks at the relics: they include the tiniest paper wrappers in which little models were contained. If they had more, Stradivari’s heir would have sold more to the Count. It is hard to imagine that the last surviving son of Antonio Stradivari, Paolo, forgot, for instance, the existence of the Bonaventi biography when the Count repeatedly required more biographical information on his famous father.

Francesco wrote this note, which was attached to a sample of strings for a customer

The handwriting of the Stradivaris is well known and has been extensively studied through a good number of specimens that still exist. None of the documents supplied by Zanardi looks to have been written by Antonio, Omobono or the third hand found on the existing true Stradivari workshop relics and commonly considered to be Francesco’s. It is hard to explain why all of the material, documents included, which Stradivari’s heirs found in the shop and sold to the Count was written by one of the three Stradivaris, but this was not the case with any of the documents Zanardi supplied.

Sample of Omobono’s writing, dated 28 January 1727

ALL PHOTOS COURTESY MUSEO DEL VIOLINO

Referring to the content of the newly rediscovered documents: mostly the information contained is simply implausible from a historical point of view and can easily be dismissed. For instance, there are letters in which Domenico Montagnana states he was working for Stradivari. But these letters are dated, and by the time they would have been written we know from indisputable archival sources that Montagnana was safely established in Venice. Moreover, he was nearly illiterate, whereas the letters, written in a fluent Italian which was surely neither Stradivari’s nor Montagnana’s language, are signed and written in clear, if not properly elegant, handwriting. A set of payment receipts informs us that in the two months between mid-October and mid-December 1703 Carlo Bergonzi made for Stradivari 16 violins, 2 cellos and a double bass. We already knew Bergonzi worked for Strad, but this new information would show he holds the world record for quick making. Lastly, there exists a confidential letter of thanks, written in Italian by none other than the King of Spain, who ends his message cheerfully greeting his good friend Antonio with the words ‘Thine, Philip V’. Leaving aside the incredible form, wording and content of the message, its value, high for us because of its reference to Stradivari, would probably be even higher being an autograph of Philip V. And this close relationship between the old violin maker and the young king would be significantly more important and surprising for the biographers of the Spanish royal family, and for those interested in their habits and acquaintances, than for us.

It is always necessary to be careful in interpreting sources and drawing conclusions, to avoid wasting the sound knowledge that generations of researchers have built up over the years through long searches and deep studies of documents in archives. Short cuts to amazing discoveries are rare: as in many circumstances, it is better to beware of unexpected gifts arriving from dubious sources. But for many of us, living in an environment populated by violins labelled with Stradivari’s name, this is probably superfluous advice.