Nicolò Amati Violin: the "Florian Zajic"
date: label: Date made
content: 1672
name: label: maker
content: Amati, Nicolo
notes: label: Description (Brief)
content: <p>This violin was made by Nicolò Amati in Cremona, Italy, 1672. It is the <i>Florian Zajic</i> violin has a top of spruce with grain of medium width, two-piece back of quarter sawn maple with flame of medium width descending slightly from the center joint, ribs and scroll of slightly plainer maple, and varnish of a golden-brown color over a golden ground. There is an original printed label inside the instrument:</p>
label: Description (Brief)
content: <p>Nicolaus Amatus Cremonen. Hieronymi<br>Fil. ac Antonij Nepos Fecit. 16<i>72</i></p>
label: Description (Brief)
content: <p>[“72” is handwritten</p>
label: Description (Brief)
content: <p>This violin is named after Professor Florian Zajic (1853-1926) of Berlin who studied at the Prague Conservatory, became the leader of
label: Description (Brief)
content: theater orchestras in Mannheim, Strassburg and Hamburg, and by 1891 was teaching at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin. His performance career included a recital with Ignacy Jan Paderewski in October, 1887 and a regular series of violin sonatas with Heinrich Grunfeld.</p>
label: Description (Brief)
content: <p>In 1885 he had acquired the <i>Ferdinand David</i> Guarneri del Gesu violin from his friend Herr Wilhelmj, which later became the property of Jascha Heifetz.</p>
label: Description (Brief)
content: <p>This Amati violin was acquired by the violin dealer Emil Herrmann who assembled 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 <i>Herbert</i> violoncello) 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. The <i>Florian Zajic</i> had also been played by the violinist, Rodney Friend, in 1986.
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: 2000.0100.02
label: accession number
content: 2000.0100
label: catalog number
content: 2000.0100.02
objectType: label: Object Name
content: violin
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: spruce (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: maple (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 23 1/2 in x 8 1/16 in x 3 7/8 in; 59.69 cm x 20.47875 cm x 9.8425 cm