Guarneri Pietro

  • Cremona 1695 – Venice 1762
  • Son of Giuseppe Giovanni Battista, he emigrated to Venice in 1717, where he entered as a worker in the workshop of Matteo Sellas, in Calle dei Stagneri. In 1728, in the church of S. Lio (Leone), he married Angiola Maria Ferrari (witness Matteo Sellas) and then resided in the same parish. From the marriage 11 children were born (7 boys and 4 girls, eight of whom premorted him). From 1733 he began to work on his own in a house with a shop located in Salizada S. Lio 63 (the long street that starting from Campo S. Lio reaches Calle delle Bande, near Santa Maria Formosa). Tax documents found in the Venetian archives reveal that he still lived poorly, despite the fact that he had sublet two rooms in his house, where he died of pneumonia at the age of 66. He was buried in the parish church of S. Lio (Leone), where his widow joined him in 1777. The years between 1717 and 1733 would have passed above all in repairing and restoring stringed instruments and in the construction of violins, probably made by several hands together with other luthiers who worked in the Sellas workshop, introducing them to the construction techniques and style. Cremonese tools. The first violin known with the Pietro label dates back to 1725 and therefore those made previously are difficult to identify. In the years of self-employment in his house he would have built many violins, some cello and very rare violas (only one is known).
  • Petrus Guarnerius filius Joseph Cremonensis / fecit Venetiis anno 17..
  • Hill 1931; Pio 2004

creato:giovedì 8 marzo 2012
modificato:giovedì 4 febbraio 2021