FROM VATICAN TO VARNISH

The 19th-century violin maker Filippo de Filippi had an unusual route to his chosen career, taking in the Papal court, the Risorgimento and Rome’s cultural milieu. Stefano Pio explores his intriguing life

Pope Pius IX arrives on the sedia gestatoria for the First Vatican Council in 1869

For researchers in the history of Italian violin making, the mists of time still conceal a plethora of unexpected surprises. A delve into the life of the 19th-century Roman luthier Filippo de Filippi (1810–78) revealed a treasure trove of interesting information on his circumstances, particularly with regard to his association with the Papal court of the day. Filippi was an intellectual who experienced firsthand the historical events of the Italian Risorgimento which, after a great deal of bloodshed and multiple revolutionary movements, finally led to the long-awaited unification of Italy. The first thing to note is that there has historically been some confusion as to Filippi’s true identity. For decades it has been assumed in several quarters that he was the same person as the almost contemporaneous Filippo Filippi (1830–1887), the most important Italian music critic of the 19th century. A friend and ardent admirer of Verdi, this Filippi wrote several works of music scholarship and contributed to the Milan-based journals La Perseveranza and Gazzetta musicale di Milano. Both men were honorary members of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, and the instruments (and scores) of Filippi the luthier that remain in the Accademia’s collection were erroneously attributed to Filippi the critic.

Whereas the latter was born in Vicenza in 1830, Filippo de Filippi appeared 20 years earlier, on 28 February 1810. He was born into a noble family from Velletri, a historic town located about 25 miles south of Rome, whose origins date back to the ancient civilisations of the Volsci and the Etruscans. Like many scions of the noble families of that time, Filippi received a civil education and musical studies appropriate to his rank, attending school in Rome. The duties of his noble status meant that upon completing his studies, he was appointed to the office of the Guardia Nobile. Formed by Pope Pius VII at the start of the 19th century, the papal ‘Noble Guard’ was made up of nobles who constituted the lay elite of the Vatican and held particularly important political and ceremonial roles. They were particularly close to the Pontiff and always paraded alongside when he was carried in procession on his gestatorial chair.

In 1846 the election of Pius IX as pontiff was seen with favour and hope in liberal Italian circles: during the 1831 insurrection of Spoleto he, as archbishop, had managed to save the city from unnecessary bloodshed. This attitude of moderation contributed, at the time of his election as Pope, to making Italian patriots think that Pius IX would be a man of liberal ideas and open to the national cause.

The sympathies that Filippi clearly demonstrated for the Risorgimento events taking place in the papal provinces during the first two years of Pius IX’s pontificate earned him important positions and various honours at the Papal court. For the many varied services rendered, he was appointed Knight of the Legion of Honour of France; Knight and Chancellor of the Jerusalem Order of Malta; and finally Commendatore. This last honorific title was the most preferred by Filippi, being the only one that was secular.

FOR THE MANY VARIED SERVICES RENDERED, FILIPPI WAS APPOINTED KNIGHT OF THE LEGION OF HONOUR OF FRANCE

Following this, after an exile lasting 17 months, the Pope returned to Rome and, with a 180-degree change of direction, implemented a new course of restoration and repression. He cancelled all the liberal acts issued by the Roman Republic: he abolished the constitution, restored the death penalty, caused the statue erected in memory of Giordano Bruno to be demolished, and reinstated the isolation of the Jews in the ghetto with related taxes and bans. In the following years there were numerous insurrections within the Papal States, repressed with the help of the Austrians, until 1859, the year of the annexation of Romagna to the nascent Kingdom of Sardinia and Piedmont. Stimulated by this example, Perugia also rose up and established a provisional government on 14 June 1859. The Pope reacted harshly, ordering the repression of the riots and sending two thousand Swiss mercenaries commanded by Colonel Anton Schmidt, who sacked the city and massacred the rioters, without sparing women and children. The event went down in history as ‘the Perugia massacre’.

Uniform of the Guardia Nobile, as of 1847

Towards the middle of the 19th century, the process of Italian national unity became unstoppable and insurrectionary movements were breaking out almost everywhere. On 24 November 1848 the birth of the Roman Republic, with its triumvirate composed of Giuseppe Mazzini, Aurelio Saffi and Carlo Armellini, forced Pius IX to leave Rome in the middle of the night, dressed as a simple priest. His destination was Gaeta, in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, where he found asylum.

Pius IX appealed to foreign powers to restore his temporal power over Rome. Napoleon III responded: an expeditionary force of 7,000 soldiers was sent under the command of General Oudinot. On 30 April 1849 the French were defeated in the battle of Porta Cavalleggeri by Garibaldi; however, the French, thanks to copious reinforcements, managed to overcome the tenacious Roman resistance and breached the walls of the Janiculum, conquering Rome a month later on 30 June 1849.

A depiction, published in 1860, of the proclamation of the Roman Republic on 9 February 1849

TRIO COVER COURTESY CONSERVATORIO DI BRESCIA

INTELLECTUALS WERE DRIVEN BY THE INTENTION OF BRINGING BACK THE ANCIENT GLORIES OF THE ITALIAN VIOLIN MAKING SCHOOL

The Pope opposed the autonomy of political–cultural institutions from the control of religion. The ‘Roman question’ was not limited to the sole problem of the territorial annexation of Rome, but called into question the complex issue of the relations between the Catholic Church and the Kingdom of Italy, already seriously compromised by the permanent opposition to the Risorgimento, which Pius IX had originally expressed back in 1849. It was only in 1870 that Rome was annexed to the Kingdom of Italy, finally becoming its capital.

What did all this social and political upheaval mean for Filippo de Filippi? After the uprisings of 1848 the various waves of turmoil and restoration in Rome placed him in disgrace. The upper echelons of the Vatican also viewed him in a bad light, thanks to his modernist skills and ideas, and he was promptly stripped of all those honours he had previously obtained.

Disappointed by the turn of political events and retiring to private life, from 1850 Filippi decided to dedicate himself full-time and with total devotion to music, which had been the first passion of his youth. Consequently he deepened his musical knowledge, dedicating himself to composition studies and writing trios (violin, cello and piano) and quartets for bowed instruments. These were not without merit, and were published by the Casa Berletti publishing house of Florence. At this time, Filippi also began studying the art of lutherie.

Starting from 1860, a strong organological interest in classical Italian violin making had begun to develop in Italian cultural circles. This fascination was combined with an appreciation of the decline in the art of lutherie since those golden years: many people argued for the need to recover the high standards of the country’s past. Some intellectuals we can mention in addition to Filippi are Gaetano Chiocchi, Antonio Pedrinelli, Luigi Cavallini, Giuseppe Camploy and Fabio Fredi (father of the well-known violin maker Rodolfo), who were influenced by these discussions and decided to take on the challenge of building bowed stringed instruments themselves. They were driven by the intention of bringing back the ancient glories of the Italian violin making school, often freely interpreting (sometimes in quite a naive way) the models of the great classical luthiers, especially those of Cremona and Brescia.

Cover of the score to a piano trio by Filippo de Filippi

The characteristic that these noble/bourgeois makers had in common was that none of them were working for profit. They did not need to make a living for themselves, and instead would enter the profession for what I would dare to call ‘cultural’ reasons. It was for pleasure that Filippi, for example, dedicated himself to manufacturing bowed stringed instruments, and he would usually offer them as gifts to professors in Rome and other cities. Being a fast, studious learner, he immediately achieved an excellent standard of quality, comparable to that of the so-called professional violin makers. His favourite model was Brescian, which he interpreted freely and with a typically personal slant. The dimensions of his violin bodies are often on the large side.

Front of an 1858 violin by Filippo de Filippi

This c.1860 example has a facsimile label of Gasparo da Salò

In the collection of the National Museum of Musical Instruments in Rome is a violin by Filippo de Filippi dated 1859 (body length 369mm) and a viola dated 1869 (body length 412mm) with a double purfling. The bodies of both instruments are built on the classic Brescian model, while their heads are made according to Filippi’s personal style, consistently present in all of his instruments.

The f-holes, often made on the Brescian model, vary from instrument to instrument. Those of these two instruments, however, share the same characteristics and model as those of the 1858 and c.1860 violins shown above. They are easily recognisable owing to their position and some other details. The lower and upper wings are small and without scoop, while the notches are carved in the ‘German’ style. The Chimei Museum in Taiwan also has a viola by Filippi, dated 1876 (see right). This instrument shares the same choice of maple for the back and ribs as the c.1860 violin above, as well as a similar varnish of a pleasant orange–red colour, applied directly to the wood without a particular preparation of a ground.

NOT ALL FILIPPI’S INSTRUMENTS WERE LABELLED, WHICH HAS CAUSED A CERTAIN DIFFICULTY IN RECOGNISING HIS WORK

In all Filippi’s instruments the purfling is somewhat irregular in thickness. The ‘black’ is always well stained. The bee-stings in the corners of the C-bouts reveal a certain roughness and an interpretative naivety typical of an amateur hand. This, however, is tempered by the harmony of the body contours. The edgework is always generous but pleasant. A visual comparison of the 1876 viola’s head with that of the c.1860 violin clearly reveals the consistency of Filippi’s style in tackling the construction of this particular part of the instrument, which has always been a test of the skill and taste of every violin maker.

In contrast to his style of f-holes, Filippi evidently did not feel attracted to the primordial heads of Brescian instruments, and this pushed him to develop his own personal model for the scroll, free from the interpretative schemes that looked to the past. The development of the volute, which is aesthetically well proportioned, highlights in its front view a particularly accentuated second turn, which does not clash in its relationship with the very elegant pegbox. Similar characteristics are also present in the heads of the instruments kept in the abovementioned museums in Rome. Thus we can state that the head is the most salient identifying element of his style and work, along with the f-holes.

Scrolls of (l–r) the 1858 Filippi violin; the c.1860 violin; and the 1876 viola

1858 VIOLIN COURTESY TARISIO. 1860 VIOLIN STEFANO PIO

Filippi became an honorary member of the Accademia musicale di Firenze (1870) and of the Regia Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome. To the latter he donated a quartet he built in 1876: the surviving violin (body length 366mm), the viola (body length 415mm) and the cello made on the Dall’Aglio model, are still part of the museum’s collection, which also contains countless scores of his chamber compositions.

Not all the instruments made by Filippi were labelled, which has caused a certain difficulty in identifying and recognising his work. This is the case with the c.1860 Filippi violin shown here (with an untouched facsimile Gasparo da Salò label placed by Filippi himself), which has a body length of 352mm – smaller than the others mentioned here. His varnish, like the Chimei viola, is red–orange while in his later years he more frequently used a golden yellow varnish. The arching of this violin is abundant, and shares with the rest of his known instruments a slight, wide channelling which is connected to the edges through a well-stained purfling with bee-stings that are not elongated. The sound of the violin is excellent and full, especially in the medium–low register due to its large bouts.

Filippo de Filippi remained active until his death in Rome on 9 March 1878. His obituary, dated 1879, is kept in the records of the Accademia musicale di Firenze and was kindly sent to me by the musicologist Renato Meucci. Much of the biographical information in this article comes from this source, which ends with the following epitaph: ‘Commendatore Filippo de Filippi was a man spare of words, steadfast in his intentions. He remained stable during the various events of his life, just as he was loved and respected by those who knew him.’