Nicolò Amati Viola: the "Professor Wirth"
date: label: date made
content: 1663
name: label: maker
content: Amati, Nicolo
notes: label: Description
content: <p>This viola was made by Nicolò Amati in Cremona, Italy, in 1663. It is the <i>Professor Wirth</i> viola, with a two-piece spruce top of medium width grain widening to the edges, two-piece back of quarter sawn maple with faint flame of narrow width mostly horizontal, ribs and scroll of similar maple, and varnish of an orange-brown color over a golden ground. There is an original printed label inside the instrument:</p>
label: Description
content: <p>Nicolaus Amatus Cremonen. Hieronymi<br>Fil. ac Antonij Nepos Fecit. 16<i>63</i></p>
label: Description
content: <p>[“63” is handwritten]</p>
label: Description
content: <p>This viola was owned by Emmanuel Wirth of the Joachim Quartet and professor at the Berlin Hochschule. Over time, it has been assessed by musicians as tonally superb and, despite confronting the physical challenges presented by its large size (17 5/8”), perhaps the finest viola in existence. From Professor Wirth the viola passed into the possession of the Finnish collector, Mr. Harry Wahl. Upon his death in 1940 his collection was dispersed, and the viola was eventually acquired by the violin dealer Emil Herrmann as part of a quartet of Amati instruments (the 1656 <i>King Louis XIV</i> and the 1672 <i>Florian Zajic</i> violins, the 1663 <i>Professor Wirth</i> viola, and the 1677 Herbert violoncello) assembled for Mrs. Anna E. Clark. She lent them to the Loewenguth Quartet of Brussels before bequeathing the quartet to the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington DC. The Corcoran loaned the quartet to the Claremont String Quartet of the North Carolina School of the Arts, and in 1975, to the Tokyo String Quartet, and then to the Takács Quartet before selling them to Dr. Herbert Axelrod in 1998</p>
place: label: place made
content: Italy: Lombardy, Cremona
setName: label: See more items in
content: Culture and the Arts: Musical Instruments
label: See more items in
content: Music & Musical Instruments
label: Exhibition
content: North Music Lobby
label: Exhibition Location
content: National Museum of American History
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Gift of Evelyn and Herbert R. Axelrod
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 2000.0100.03
label: accession number
content: 2000.0100
label: catalog number
content: 2000.0100.03
objectType: label: Object Name
content: viola
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: spruce (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: maple (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 29 1/4 in x 10 in x 4 1/4 in; 74.295 cm x 25.4 cm x 10.795 cm