A tenor viola, Absam, 1660.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has three Stradivari violins, good cellos but hitherto no violas of any note to form a string quartet for performance within the museum setting. By finding a suitable viola to fill their requirement it has transformed the musical potential of their playing collection. Jacob Stainer is the most significant violin maker working outside of Italy contemporaneous to the golden-period of Cremonese violin making. This is one of the finest and most significant examples of this maker’s work, but as a tenor viola with the added problem of deep ribs it was unmanageable as a playing instrument for regular professional use. With this in mind it satisfies the objectives of the museum collection, and it allows it an extended playing life under controlled conditions that are both suitable for its remarkable state of preservation and suitable to save the arms of musicians who would otherwise suffer from sustained use.
Connoissership at Oxford University.
For the academic world there are deep problems that arise from historic artefacts that are untethered from a record of provenance, and the violin is
