Source: ‘Messiah’ photo Tucker Densley/Ashmolean Museum. Ct scan Francesco Piasentini @ Tec Eurolab
The following is an extract from an article in The Strad’s January 2021 issue in which we examine the findings of an extensive project to CT-scan the Stradivari’s iconic 1716 violin, the ‘Messiah’.
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The date was Monday 5 September 2016 and Francesco Piasentini, a violin maker with a PhD in metallurgical engineering, was waiting at TEC Eurolab, a leading company in non-destructive testing near Modena, for the return of the ‘Messiah’. At 11am Gregg Alf, a fellow violin maker and expert from Cremona’s Museo del Violino (MdV), would be delivering one of the rarest violins on earth. Accompanied by Fausto Cacciatori and Colin Harrison, curators from the MdV and Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum respectively, Antonio Stradivari’s iconic 1716 violin was returning to the city of its birth in celebration of its 300th a
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