Carlo Giuseppe Testore

Violin maker
(c. 1660 – 1716)

Carlo Giuseppe Testore (c.1660–5 March 1716) trained under Giovanni Grancino, and is regarded as the finest maker of the whole Testore dynasty — his instruments, especially his cellos, show a clear stylistic debt to his teacher, though his scrolls are instantly distinguishable by a characteristic diagonal bulge, quite unlike Grancino's own perfect symmetry. He married Lucia Presbler and had nine ...Read More children between 1684 and 1703, two of whom, Carlo Antonio (b. 1 September 1693) and Paolo Antonio (b. 14 June 1700), continued the family trade. The Testores lived from 1693 in a house on the Contrada Larga known for the inn beneath it, "the Dog Howling at the Moon" — the same building the Pasta family moved into simultaneously, suggesting some short-lived working arrangement between the two families — and the Testores remained there continuously until 1776. In 1703 Carlo Giuseppe, together with fellow maker Antonio Maria Lavazza, formally protested to the violin makers' guild over an improperly approved admission, a rare surviving glimpse of the trade's internal politics. Read Less

Price History

- The auction record for this maker is $281,200 in Mar 2021, for a violin.
- 70 auction price results.

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Testore family tree

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