A Cremonese Rarity

Giovanni Maria del Bussetto is an enigmatic character in the history of Italian violin making. His work is rare and has in the past been dated to either the 16^th or 17^th century, depending on whose account you read. Some ascribe him to Brescia, others to Cremona, the city he actually names on his labels.

Furthermore, it is a very familiar name to double-bass players, to whom it represents a particular style of instrument with rounded lower corners, all of which only adds to the confusion. This is in fact a complete misunderstanding based on a single mis-labelled 18th century German double bass. The connection with Brescia might stem from an almost certainly mistaken association of the name with the much earlier Giovanni Maria of Brescia, whose 16^th century viols can be seen in the Ashmolean Museum. The enigma of Bussetto has spawned a great deal of speculation, and to a large extent misses his real significance.

The reason Bussetto is so important is that the small handful of labels that do survive give his place of work as Cremona and come from the period 1660 to 1675. The violins (and there are only violins presently recorded, despite the mysterious double bass story) have been given speculative dates as late as 1685, and are in fact very distinctive and consistent, showing great individual character. This was a highly distinguished time and place to be established as a violin maker, so it is astonishing that so little is known about him, given that he worked alongside Amati, Andrea Guarneri, and the young Stradivari.

Busseto (in its modern spelling), his presumed place of origin, is a small town near Parma, only 26 kilometres south of Cremona. If he did make the journey to Cremona in search of work, there is no indication that he had any previous experience as a luthier which might have recommended him to any of the workshops there.

In 1660, of course, Cremonese violin making was dominated by the Amati family. Nicolò was in his prime, working with his son Hieronymus II. But he had earlier established a precedent by employing assistants from outside the family, and even from outside the city itself. This is certainly an indication of his Europe-wide success, and the great demand for his instruments. Andrea Guarneri joined him in 1640, G.B. Rogeri from Bologna in 1661, but also, most interestingly, other little known and rarely encountered names like Giacomo Gennaro from Cremona, Bartolomeo Pasta, and one Leopoldo Tedesco, presumably of German origin. These are all recorded as having been part of the Amati household in the middle of the 17^th century.

Two great Cremonese names are notably missing from this list, Francesco Rugeri and Antonio Stradivari, but also that of Giovanni Maria del Bussetto.

The complexity of the society of violin makers in Cremona in this period is intriguing, and the similarities between this violin and work by the Pasta family is striking. Pasta instruments also lack the technical markers of classical Cremonese work, and it might well be that Pasta and Bussetto worked simply as general assistants, without formal training from the master, not as apprentices who were initiated into the finer aspects of the craft.

Of the other workmen in the Amati shop, Tedesco turned up in Rome sometime after 1654, and Rogeri left for Brescia in 1664. Bartolomeo Pasta established himself in Milan in 1673 at the house of the Testore family, but Gennaro remained in Cremona until his death in 1671. In Milan, Bartholomeo Pasta used labels describing himself as ‘alievo de Amati’, as did his son Gaetano in Brescia, even though in the latter case it could not have been strictly true.