Francesco Goffriller

Francesco Goffriller was born in Venice on 4 November 1691, the son of Matteo Goffriller and Maddalena Maria Kaiser. He trained in his father's workshop in the Calle di Ca' Dolfin, and by 1705 was already trusted to handle business on Matteo's behalf — a receipt survives from that September, signed by Francesco, for a harp repair owed to his father by the Ospedale della Pietà. Around 1714, at twenty-two, ...Read More he left Venice for Udine. No evidence points to any falling-out; more likely he sought a market of his own, away from both his father's shadow and the intense Venetian competition of the day, where makers such as Domenico Montagnana were building formidable reputations.

He settled permanently in Udine after a brief return to Venice in 1716 to certify his unmarried status, and became the city's first resident violin maker. His workshop drew younger makers to the area, among them Francesco Pilosio, a Udine Cathedral orchestra violinist whose own instruments show Goffriller's influence. Stefano Pio's research also proposes, on the evidence of f-holes on surviving Goffriller instruments that appear to have been cut by another hand, that Santo Serafin learned violin making under Francesco before establishing himself in Venice around 1721 — already a mature craftsman by the time he arrived.

Away from his father's example, Francesco's own work took on a plainer character: less refined in finish, occasionally built in poplar rather than the woods his father favoured, with purfling that is less exact in both material and placement. What the instruments lack in polish they compensate for in tone — his violins and cellos remained in demand at the Ospedale della Pietà even after his move (a 1760 invoice records repair work on one of his violins), and one of his cellos was long associated with Jacqueline du Pré.

He had at least three children with his second wife, Elisabetta — Antonio Sebastiano (b. 1734), Anna Maria (b. 1736), and a second son also named Antonio Sebastiano (b. 1742), likely after the first died young. The date of Francesco's own death is not recorded; it fell sometime before 1755, the year his widow Elisabetta is first mentioned as such. Read Less

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