21 September 2022 - 26 February 2023

20th-Century Italian Luthiers in the Collections of the Museo del Violino

Museo del Violino piazza Marconi 5, Cremona

20TH-CENTURY ITALIAN LUTHIERS
IN THE COLLECTIONS OF THE MUSEO DEL VIOLINO

curator FAUSTO CACCIATORI

The Collection of Italian Violin Making, currently hosted in the Museo del Violino, consists of 57 instruments mainly belonging to the Civic Violin Making Collections of the Municipality of Cremona.

Among the numerous makers we find some of the most distinguished Italian luthiers of the previous century.

The collection, assembled thanks to several donations from 1932 to 2021, allows us to reconstruct the history of Cremonese and Italian violin making in the twentieth century. After the difficulties encountered during the largest part of the century, the last decades were marked by a new season of renewed leadership of the city of Cremona.  

1937 is remembered as one of the most significant dates in the history of Cremonese violin making. The Stradivarian Celebrations taking place that year played an indisputable role in the process of reconstruction of the city’s identity and in the birth of the International School of Violin Making.
The celebrations, organized two centuries after the death of the greatest luthier ever, included an exhibition of historical violin making in palazzo Cittanova and the exhibition of the instruments of the Competition of Modern Violin Making in palazzo Soranzo Vidoni.

Due to its history, Cremona was chosen nationwide as the centre for promoting the revival of modern violin making and as the place for hosting the works of the most prominent luthiers of the twentieth century. In that context two important donations were made by the Fascist Federation of Craftsmen and the National Agency for Crafts and Small Size Industries (E.N.A.P.I). The first donation consisted in 19 instruments made by Italian violin makers that had been awarded in previous national contests. The second one is the group of the 24 prize-winning instruments of the competition that took place in Cremona in 1937.

Eventually, the Collection was further enriched by new instruments thanks to the generosity of private citizens.

The documents, images and videos that complement the exhibition testify to some turning points in the history of Italian violin making and give a face to some of its leading figures.

The violin donated by the maker Gaetano Sgarabotto to Gabriele D’Annunzio in 1934, currently belonging to Il Vittoriale degli italiani of Gardone Riviera (Brescia), is the only “guest instrument” of the exhibition

From 10th  February to 21st May 2023

PICTURA TACITUM POEMA
Andrea Amati pavilion Piazza Marconi 5 , Cremona

Myths and landscapes painted in the Domus of CremonaMigliaia of fragments of painted plaster, come to light in the excavation of the Domus del Ninfeo of Piazza Marconi, In addition to being a very important testimony of the evolution of Roman painting in Cisalpine from the beginning of the first century B.C. to 69 A.D., they tell the many stories of the house and its owners.
An extraordinary example is the "Arianna Room", a cubiculum (sleeping room) on the walls of which were depicted several moments of the Cretan myth: first abandoned by Theseus after the killing of the Minotaur, Later discovered by Dionysus asleep on the beach of the island of Naxos, Ariadne finally appears triumphant bride of the god himself.
From another excavation, via Colletta, come the decorations of the Domus dei Candelabri dorati, also witnesses of how widespread in the residences of Cremona the refined artistic culture derived from Hellenism.
Fragments that, after long years of study, analysis, and restoration, are returned to us in their meaning and beauty thanks to comparisons with some frescoes, present in the exhibition, from Pompeii, Rome, Ostia, and Verona, and with spectacular multimedia reconstructions.

From 18th February to 1st April 2023

THE OTHER SOUL OF THE VIOLIN
Auditorium Giovanni Arvedi piazza Marconi 5, Cremona

The fifth edition of L'altra anima del violino falls in the year in which the Violin Museum celebrates its tenth anniversary. Inevitably, in the artistic project, go and dig into the "trunk of memories" of the first two decades of musical activity of the Auditorium Giovanni Arvedi and re-present artists who were among the most loved by the public. These include the world violin star Leonidas Kavakos who returns with "his" pianist Enrico Pace to propose a concert unconventional in content, so absolutely in line with the philosophy of a review that was born to bring out the less-known profile of the violin. When Anastasiya Petryshak performed in 2013 at the Auditorium Arvedi was a promise of the still fresh bow of studies; Ten years later he is a young star of the violin firmament who boasts excellent collaborations with artists such as Andrea Bocelli and who has just released his new album with the prestigious label Sony Music. This appointment wants to be a deserved consecration for the good Ukrainian artist and pianist Lorenzo Meo. The exhibition opens with the absolute premiere of a show of words and music that testifies to the originality of expressive languages of The other soul of the violin, a project inspired by Mozart’s first Journey to Italy and which finds in the Great Beauty of our Country a reference to which we should always strive.