Giuseppe Scarampella

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Giuseppe Scarampella, of the Brescia family of makers, was singled out early by Nicolò Bianchi — an established Italian luthier and dealer working in Paris — who first wrote about him in 1858, pressing mutual acquaintances (chiefly the violinist Antonio Bazzini) about when the young man might be ready to come and work for him. Giuseppe finished his military service first, and did not actually ...Read More reach Paris until 1862, when Bianchi wrote to him directly: "our celebrated Signor Bazzini's good opinion of you has decided me to make you my successor here." Within a year Giuseppe was running the workshop during Bianchi's absences, signing letters "associé de Bianchi," and in 1863 he completed his first violin built entirely on his own.

That same year he travelled through Italy on Bianchi's business, stopping in his home city of Brescia — and, presumably around this visit, tracked down and copied out a rare 1786 treatise by Antonio Bagatella on violin, viola and cello construction that Bianchi had long been trying to obtain. Giuseppe later passed his copy on to his younger brother Stefano, who trained under him and would go on to a considerably more celebrated career of his own.

By the mid-1860s Giuseppe had settled in Florence, where he became an official supplier to the city's Royal Music Institute and, by 1872, was living with his family near Prato for his wife's health. His Florence years were built substantially on restoration work for the Medici instrument collection: he repaired the 1690 Stradivari tenor viola after woodworm damage was identified, restored the collection's Stradivari cello in 1877, and worked on an Amati cello in 1884, among other commissions carried out on behalf of the collection's expert, Luigi Castellani. Alongside this exacting work he also produced simpler, lower-cost instruments to order — some evidently built from German factory stock and finished with his own fire-branded stamp rather than his full label — a clearly marked distinction from the instruments that were genuinely his own construction.

Surviving instruments from his Florence period show his personal style still developing: a viola from around 1870 has f-holes that still recall Bianchi's Guarnerian training, alongside a scroll already moving toward the more individual form of his later work. Few late instruments survive, which makes tracing that evolution difficult. He died in 1902. Read Less

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