Viola da gamba, bass
by Claude Boivin
Paris, ca. 1740

Viola da gamba Claude Boivin, ca. 1740




Viola da gamba Claude Boivin, ca. 1740 Viola da gamba Claude Boivin, ca. 1740




Viola da gamba Claude Boivin, ca. 1740


Viola da gamba Claude Boivin, ca. 1740 Head by M. Sipos

See also:
Head and Pegbox of a French Pardessus de viole, 18th C.

Although many viols in this form appear in painting, the surviving examples have more often than not been transofrmed into violoncelli, thereby losing the sloping of the shoulders. This viola da gamba by the celebrated Parisian instrument maker, Claude Boivin, was purchased while still in cello form. Sometime in the 19th C. the renowned Mirecourt luthier, Nicolas François Vuillaume, active then in Brussels, added wood to the shoulders of the viol to square off at the neck, in cello fashion. This viol was then reconverted to its original form in 2001.

This first viols of this form date from the 16th Century; iconographic evidence is abundant, both from the Renaissance and the Baroque. Further, a number of extant instruments in private hands and museum collections yield proof to the ubiquitousness of these viols in Europe; indeed one fresco known to me is to be found as far away as St. Petersburg!

The following portrait of Mr. Hotman (ca. 1650), a German virtuoso residing in France, proves that this form is not at all a late development in the evolution of the viol, but that it was very much a part of the scenery in the rather heterogeneous manifestations of the viol throughout its history.

Viola da gamba Hotman

Note the falling shoulders and the f-holes, the low placement of the bridge, the long and thin neck. Jean Rousseau (1687) attributes the thinning of the neck, which he heralds to be an improvement in French viol construction, to his teacher, St. Colombe, but here we have unequivocally iconographical evidence substantially antedating his "Traité de la Viole".


Viola da gamba - Spanish, 17th C.

Yet another example of this type of viol, dating from the beginning of the 17th C. in Spain
(Valencia Fine Arts Museum).
Luthiers know to have made viols in this form are:
Gasparo da Salo, Francesco Bertolotti da Salo, Antonio Brensio, Domenico Russo. the Amatis, the Guarneris, the Ruggieris, Stradivarius, Jean Baptiste D. Salomon, the Kloz Family and many others.

Body length 668 mm
Upper width
327 mm
Middle width 231 mm
Lower width 402 mm
Rib height 122 mm
String length 671 mm

Literature:
For an identical instrument see:
Sylvette Milliot: Histoire de la lutherie parisienne du XVIIIe siècle à 1960,
Tome II: Les luthiers du XVIIIe siècle (Les amis de la musique, 1997), pp. 213-216.


updated 03.10.2007