Pietro Grulli

Violin maker
(1822 – 1898)

Pietro Grulli (1831–1898) came to violin making almost by accident: he began his working life assisting Francesco Ghisi as a piano maker, and only turned to violins around 1859, when wartime demand for pianos dried up. He sold his first violin around 1862 — "of rough form, but sounded well," in the words of a contemporary account — and by 1870, with Gaetano Antoniazzi's departure for Milan, he ...Read More was one of only three makers still working in Cremona itself, alongside Enrico Ceruti and Giuseppe Beltrami. He did not begin working seriously on his own account until around 1876, largely self-equipped, and by the end of his career had produced roughly forty instruments, several of them exported to America. As a contemporary of Ceruti's, Grulli absorbed some of his influence — most visibly in details like the pinning of backs and the undercutting of scroll buttons — while his better instruments openly emulate the freer, looser style of Lorenzo Storioni. His work is uneven, ranging from genuinely inspired to eccentric and roughly made, but is now increasingly regarded as a real, if minor, extension of the late Cremonese tradition. Read Less

Price History

- The auction record for this maker is $31,677 in Mar 1997, for a cello.
- 19 auction price results.

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