Nicolò Amati Violin: the "King Louis XIV": Museum Object and Cultural History

The object in the museum catalogue

This violin was made by Nicolò Amati in Cremona, Italy in 1656. It is the King Loius XIV violin with a top of spruce with grain of narrow width, one-piece back of slab cut maple with medium width flame mostly horizontal, ribs and volute of quarter sawn maple with narrower flame, double purfling to the top and back, mastic fleur-de-lys inlays to the corners of the top and back and to the rib joints, and varnish of a golden-brown color over a golden ground. There is an original printed label inside the instrument:

Nicolaus Amatus Cremonen. Hieronymi Fil. ac Antonij Nepos Fecit. 1656

The Strad magazine, March 1967, pages 410-433). The earliest

known owner is Jean Baptiste Vuillaume who bought the violin at

a London sale in 1855, and then sold it to the Russian nobleman,

Prince Nicholas Yousoupoff. As a student of the violin, Prince

Yousoupoff studied under Henry Vieuxtemps; he composed music

the violin was again sold by J.B. Vuillaume on 8 February 1862 to

Materials, dates and provenance

• Date made: 1656
• maker: Amati, Nicolo
• Object Name: violin
• Physical Description: spruce (overall material)
• Physical Description: maple (overall material)
• Measurements: overall: 24 in x 8 3/8 in x 3 1/2 in; 60.96 cm x 21.2725 cm x 8.89 cm
• Place Made: Italy: Lombardy, Cremona
• ID Number: 2000.0100.01
• accession number: 2000.0100
• catalog number: 2000.0100.01
• Credit Line: Gift of Evelyn and Herbert R. Axelrod
• Data Source: National Museum of American History

Sources and reuse

Catalogue descriptions and facts adapted from National Museum of American History through the Smithsonian's official Open Access dataset. This record explicitly marks its metadata CC0 1.0; formatting and selection have been changed. The displayed image also has an explicit CC0 designation.