Antonio Stradivari was a 17th-and-18th century instrument maker who is still famous for having made beautiful, mysterious violins. Many thought he used a secret ingredient to create the brilliant varnish unique to his instruments. In a recently released study aimed at demystifying the Stradivari violin, researchers in France and Germany subjected five of his violins from a museum collection to a series of spectroscopic and microscopic tests. Quite anticlimactically, it turns out he was just using materials typical for that era, plus some red pigments for added color:
Stradivari first applied a layer of an oil comparable to the oils used by painters of the same epoch, without fillers or pigments to seal the wood. We did not find a mineral-rich layer, as some earlier work suggests. The master violinmaker next applied a slightly tinted oil-resin layer. We have detected nothing that would have suggested the use of protein-containing materials, gums, or fossil resins.
Secret behind the composition of the varnish on Stradivari violins revealed [via Physorg.com]
Photo via The Alieness Gisele Giardino’s Flickr