History
The Genoese violin-making tradition
Genoa is better known for its port than for its luthiers, yet the city has produced string instruments without interruption for almost four centuries.
The beginnings: a guild of instrument makers
In the first half of the seventeenth century Genoa already had a guild of instrument makers. Many of its members came from the German-speaking lands and worked above all on lutes and guitars — the instruments then in demand in a wealthy trading city.
The eighteenth century
As the violin became the leading instrument of Italian music, Genoese workshops multiplied. Around the middle of the century the city counted several busy makers; names such as Bernardo Calcagni, Paolo Castello, Jacopo Cordano and Giuseppe Cavaleri belong to this period. It was in this lively musical city that the young Niccolò Paganini, born in 1782, learned to play.
Crisis and recovery in the nineteenth century
The upheavals of the Napoleonic years and the arrival of cheaper instruments from France and Germany hit Italian lutherie hard. Many workshops closed or turned to repairs. In Genoa the tradition was kept alive by makers such as Nicolò Bianchi, and later by Giuseppe Rocca (1807–1865), who settled in the city after his years in Turin; his son Enrico Rocca and Eugenio Praga carried the Genoese workshop into the late nineteenth century.
Cesare Candi and the twentieth century
Cesare Candi (1869–1947), who began as a guitar and mandolin maker, became the central figure of modern Genoese violin making. His workshop trained or influenced a generation of makers, among them Paolo De Barbieri and Giuseppe Lecchi, and his decorated instruments are among the most admired of the period.
A living tradition
What links these makers is a recognisable attitude: solid, practical construction, a taste for the great Cremonese models — above all the Guarneri “del Gesù” that the city has kept since Paganini’s bequest — and a strong bond with the musicians of Genoa. It is the tradition in which our instruments are made today.