Antonio Stradivari

Antonio was married twice in his lifetime. In the year 1667, he was married to Francesca Feraboschi. The couple had six children. Two of his sons from this marriage would later become violin-makers like their father.

In 1698, Francesca died, and the next year, Antonio married Antonia Maria Zambelli. There were five children from this marriage, but no one was part of the instrument-making business.

Antonio died on December 18, 1737 at the age of 93. The accomplished luthier and his second wife were buried in a tomb across the street at ‘Chapel of the Rosary’ of the ‘Church of San Domenico’.

There are no established records of Antonio’s birth, but some evidences suggest that he was probably born in 1644 in Cremona. He was the son of Anna Moroni and Alessandro Stradivari.

He may have started his apprenticeship with Nicolo Amati, as many of his early instruments resembled Amati’s style. Some other sources also suggest that he started his career as a wood worker and worked mainly on designs of Amati’s violins.

Under the guidance of Amati, Antonio started producing decent instruments in 1660; he was merely 16 then. He stayed with Amati for a few more years, until he got a solid foothold in the world of instrument-makers.

In the initial days, he produced many stringed instruments like mandolins, guitars, and lutes. The basic design still resembled Amati’s, but Antonio started with his experimentations with design and tone.

During 1680’s, his experimentations gave birth to solid violins which had different finishes. Gradually he was deviating from his mentor’s style. The sound of these violins was extremely powerful, and they were soon popular not only in Cremona but also in other places.

After Amati’s death in 1684, Antonio consolidated his position as the finest violin-maker in Cremona.

He dabbled in intricacies of instrument-making and his precision increased as evident from his 1690 creation, the ‘Tuscan violin’, where inserting the purfling rapidly needed dexterity and accuracy.

The eminent instrument maker had a great influence on the Cremonense violin making school and his style defined violin making across the globe for over the next three centuries. Stradivari is credited with the design of the 'long strad violin' which were inspiration for future luthiers such as Daniel Parker and Jean Baptiste Vuillaume.