Giuseppe Fiorini

One of the most important and influential Italian makers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Giuseppe Fiorini was the son of the violinmaker Raffaele, born in Bazzano in 1861. By 1877 he was established independently in Bologna, and in 1881 first encountered the Stradivari relics purchased by Count Cozio di Salabue,  which were exhibited in the city by Cozio’s heirs, the Dalle Valle family. He then moved to Munich to work in partnership with Andreas Rieger, marrying his daughter Walpurga in 1889. The shop became ‘Rieger & Fiorini’, and Fiorini took over the business on his retirement in 1896.

Fiorini flourished as a maker, expert and restorer, and in 1904 he helped found the Verband Deutscher Geigenbauer. The First World War prompted a move to Zurich in 1916, where he worked until 1922. In 1920 he managed to purchase the Dalle Valle collection, with the intention of providing a basis for a school of violin making in Bologna. In 1922 he was joined by Ansaldo Poggi, and they moved to Rome in 1923. With failing eyesight, Fiorini relied increasingly of the help of Poggi and Simone Sacconi, but effectively retired from violin making in 1925. He then concentrated his efforts on opening a national school of violin making in Cremona, to which he bequeathed the Dalle Valle collection in 1930, before returning to Munich where he died in 1934.