(b Botticino Sera, nr Brescia, bap. 25 Aug 1580; d Brescia, ?1630–31). Italian violin maker. The best-known maker of the Brescian school, he was a pupil of Gasparo da Salò. Whereas Gasparo is chiefly noted for his tenor violas, Maggini’s output reflected the increased popularity of the violin. His instruments influenced the work of many later makers (including at times Stradivari and Guarneri).
Maggini moved to Brescia between 1586 and 1587, where he became Gasparo’s pupil. His presence there is documented from 1598 to 1604, and in 1606 he bought a house with a workshop near Gasparo’s first home, in the front of the Palazzo Vecchio del Podestà. He married Anna Foresti in 1615 and had ten children, although only four survived. A dowry document shows that Giacomo Lafranchini, ‘magister a violinis’, lived with the Maggini family. Evidence of his family and business life is documented in two tax returns (1617 and 1626) and a number of notarial documents and other records of the parish of S Agata. In 1622–3 he moved to a larger house in via Bombaserie a Sant’Agata. He is shown to have paid a salary to a workman, possibly Lafranchini. In July 1630 he was still alive, shortly before the arrival in the city of the plague. The death register was abandoned between July 1630 and June 1631, during which time Maggini must have died: his death is not recorded in the register after its resumption, and in 1632 he is referred to as dead in a document witnessed by his son Carlo, then six years old.
In comparison with those of his Cremonese contemporaries the Amatis, Maggini’s violins appear compact in outline: in general the waist of his design is less pronounced than on an Amati instrument with its more rounded, more elegant curves. In addition the arching of back and table are left fuller towards the edge. The violins are of two patterns, the bodies being either rather less than 35·5 cm long or, more usually, about 37 cm. It was the deep, rich sonority of the larger model that encouraged Stradivari to seek a combination of the virtues of Cremona and Brescia with his ‘long pattern’ violins dated between 1690 and 1699. In general, however, by increasing the volume of air in the body of a violin, the maker runs the risk of losing the essential soprano quality of violin tone, particularly on the lower strings. What Guarneri – more than a century later – sought to do, and achieved with unsurpassed success, was to adapt the compactness of Maggini’s form and the strong gradation of the thickness of the plates in Gasparo’s violins to 18th-century Cremonese principles of construction, at the same time limiting his dimensions strictly to preserve a much smaller volume of air than the normal Maggini. Maggini’s achievement, however, was the creation of a violin with a big, broad tone, darker in colour but with more depth of response than the Amati. That the later Cremonese makers reacted as they did to his work shows that the tonal characteristics of the Maggini were well appreciated by players of the 17th century, as they were again in the 19th, when innumerable copies were made in the best workshops of Paris as well as Mirecourt, and in the German factories. The copies mostly have more normal dimensions, but are complete with the characteristic double row of purfling, soundholes with small lobes and small wings and other features. Needless to say they lack the rich, glowing red-brown or golden orange varnish, usually quite equal to that of the Amatis, though sometimes with a rather drier appearance.
Maggini is credited with having modernized the viola in accordance with changes in musical style and the demands of instrumental technique, thus contributing to the development of a new sound ideal. He reduced the dimensions of the viola from 44·4 cm (Gasparo’s model) to 42·8 cm, and later to about 41·5 cm. Three examples of the smaller size are believed to be extant, and apparently predate the sole small viola made by Antonio and Girolamo Amati in 1615. In Maggini’s viola the bridge is placed halfway along the body: as well as making the instrument easier to handle by reducing the string length and therefore the necessary reach of the fingers of the left hand, this has a positive effect on the tone quality because the bridge is fixed at a good vibration point on the top plate; however, some may regard this placement as less aesthetically pleasing.
Maggini may also have been the first to make a cello smaller in size than the large Cremonese instruments commonly in use until the last quarter of the 17th century: the two known survivors, broad in proportion to their length, foreshadow the dimensions favoured by the celebrated Venetian makers a century and more later. Maggini, when compared to his contemporaries, brought the voices of the individual members of the violin family closer together in timbre to produce a highly homogeneous sound mixture, perhaps influenced in part by technical devices used in the organ. This idea was to some extent revived by Stradivari. In addition to violins, violas and cellos, Maggini made basses and instruments of the viol family, and also the Brescian cittern.
It is impossible to indicate with conviction the different stages of Maggini’s development, as his labels (on which his name appeared as Gio: Paolo Maggini in Brescia) were never dated. Maggini’s early death ended the contribution of the Brescian school to the development of the violin family: he was the last of the great Brescian makers.
L. Cozzando: Ristretto dell’historia bresciana (Brescia, 1694/R)
A. Berenzi: Di Gio: Paolo Maggini, celebre liutaio bresciano (Brescia, 1890/R)
A. Berenzi: La Patria di Gio: Paolo Maggini (Cremona, 1891)
M.L. Huggins: Gio: Paolo Maggini: his Life and Work (London, 1892)
G. Livi: I liutai bresciani (Milan, 1896)
A.M. Mucchi: Gasparo da Salò: la vita e l’opera 1540–1609 (Milan, 1940)
E. Meli: ‘Liutai e organari’, Storia di Brescia, ed. G. Treccani degli Alfieri, iii (Brescia, 1964), 887–906
F. Dassenno and U. Ravasio, eds.: Gasparo da Salò e la liuteria bresciana tra Rinascimento e Barocco (Brescia, 1990)
U. Ravasio: ‘Vecchio e nuovo nella ricerca documentaria su Gasparo da Salò e la liuteria bresciana’, Liuteria e musica strumentale a Brescia tra Cinque e Seicento: Salò 1990, 25–43
CHARLES BEARE/UGO RAVASIO