(fl Padua, c1591–c1627). German lute maker. He came from Tieffenbruck in the Bavarian Alps. In 1590 he bought his freedom, and according to E.G. Baron (1727) was apprenticed to Leonardo Tieffenbrucker the younger in Venice. However surviving evidence (including his instrument labels) places him in Padua between at least 1591 and 1627. References cited by Toffolo appear to refer at least in part to another Michael Hartung, whose relationship to the luthier has yet to be established.
Hartung's surviving instruments include three lutes in the Germanisches National Museum, Nuremberg; number MI 56 is a small bass lute from 1599; MI 44 is a large bass from 1602; MIR 899 is undated, and has a later extension added. There are further instruments in Birmingham, Ann Arbor, Washington DC (Folger Shakespeare Library: a lute dated 1598), Bologna (Museo Civico, no.1808, dated 1599) and Füssen (Museum der Stadt, dated 1611). Hellwig (1971) mentions a further instrument dated 1594 in a private collection. These are typical of their period, with a rounded profile and multi-rib backs of striped heart- and sapwood yew. Hartung's brand consists of the initials mh on either side of a tall cross. This is clearly visible on the endclasp of a large multi-rib yew lute in two pictures by the Italian still-life painter Evaristo Baschenis.
Hartung's instruments have often been confused with those of Andrea Harton, possibly a relative. Andrea worked in Venice, and only two instruments by him are known to survive. An ebony and ivory theorbo, now converted to a German Baroque lute, is in the Musikhistorisk Museum og Carl Claudius Samling, Copenhagen (no.102A), and is dated 1617. The second instrument is in the Shrine to Music Museum, Vermillion, South Dakota.
F. Hellwig: ‘An Example of Lute Restoration’, GSJ, xxiii (1970), 64–8
F. Hellwig: ‘Makers' Marks on Plucked Instruments of the 16th and 17th Centuries’, GSJ, xxiv (1971), 22–32
R. Nurse: ‘Design and Structural Development of the Lute in the Renaissance’, Lute Symposium: Utrecht 1986, 101–12
S. Toffolo: Antichi strumenti veneziani 1500–1800: quattro secoli di liuteria e cembalaria (Venice, 1987)
R. Bletschacher: Die Lauten- und Geigenmacher des Füssener Landes (Hofheim am Taunus, 2/1991)
LYNDA SAYCE