German family of lute makers. Luca [Laux, Lucas] Maler (b Thengen nel Baden, Konstanz, c1475–85; d Bologna, 5 July 1552), son of Conrad and Margherita Maler, was active in Bologna from about 1503. His brother Sigismondo [Sismondo, Simone] (i) Maler is mentioned in Bolognese documents in 1518, but worked mainly in Venice. Sigismondo (ii), son of Luca, was born about 1505 and died before 1542.
Luca Maler is a principal figure in the history of lute making, and is credited with the invention of the long ‘Bologna’ body shape. The excellence of his lutes was legendary, and they continued to be mentioned and to fetch high prices long after his death. In 1523 Federico II Gonzaga asked his brother Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga to find him a lute by Maler. The 1566 Fugger inventory (see Stockbauer, 1874, and Smith, 1980) includes four lutes by Laux ‘Müller’. In 1648 Jacques Gaultier, in correspondence with Constantijn Huygens who wanted to buy a Maler lute, wrote that Maler was the best maker of nine-ribbed Bologna lutes, that probably fewer than 50 survived, and that certainly fewer than six were known to him in London. Gaultier had bought one for Charles I for £100. Thomas Mace wrote in 1676 that he had seen this lute and two others, ‘(pittiful, Old battered cracked things), valued at 100 l [£] a piece’. Baron (1727) considered Maler ‘without doubt one of the oldest and best masters’ and wrote of his lutes that ‘it is a source of wonder that he already built them after the modern fashion, namely with the body long in proportion, flat and broad-ribbed’, referring to the practice of many 18th-century German luthiers of reviving the classic Bologna shape.
Bolognese documents show that Maler had considerable commercial success in spite of having arrived in Bologna in a time of unrest, when foreigners were being banished from the city. His last address in Bologna was a large house at the corner of via Marescalchi and via San Mamolo; he also owned other properties and considerable holdings of land in the outskirts of the city. At his death his inventory included more than 1100 lutes in at least three sizes and more than 1300 instruments awaiting completion. The inventory mentions only pre-worked timber, evidence of the factory-like nature of the workshop. Among the several predominantly German luthiers mentioned in Maler's workshop were Giovanni (Hans) Pos, who was married to Maler's sister Anna, and Leonardo Sturmer. Sturmer married a daughter of Pos and is listed as both luthier and ‘ebanista’ (a worker of decorative inlays in wood). Sturmer inherited the bulk of Maler's business and he and his family continued to trade from Maler's premises. He is mentioned in several notarial documents as ‘Leonardo Sturmer alias Maler’ or simply as ‘Leonardo Maler’. Sturmer and his heirs continued the business until at least 1613.
The few Maler lutes that survive have all undergone considerable alterations. They are in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg (no.MI 54), the Wrocław Museum (no.5515), the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (lute body, no.194–1882) and – an ivory lute – in the private collection of Charles Beare, London. Two were formerly in the Národní Muzeum, Prague (nos.654 and 655). A lute attributed to Maler in the Kunsthistorisch Museum, Vienna) (no.28/C32) is in a different style and is unlikely to be his work.
Sigismondo (i) Maler is recorded in Venice from at least 1514, when he shared a house and workshop in the district of San Salvador with his cousin Vizenzo [Vicenzo] Venier. In 1526 Jacopo Tibaldi, envoy of the Duke of Ferrara, Alfonso I d'Este, was requested to obtain Sigismondo's varnish recipe. Sadly it has not survived, although it is known from the Estensi correspondence that there were two kinds. None of Sigismondo's lutes survive, but the Fugger inventory includes three, and according to Gaultier's correspondence with Huygens, he made many 11-rib lutes.
E.G. Baron: Historisch-theoretisch und practische Untersuchung des Instruments der Lauten (Nuremberg, 1727/R; Eng. trans., 1976, as Study of the Lute)
J. Stockbauer: Die Kunstbestrebungen am bayerischen Hofe (Vienna, 1874/R)
F. Hellwig: ‘Lute-making in the Late 15th and 16th centuries’, LSJ, xvi (1974), 24–38
J. Downing: ‘The Maler and Frei Lutes: some Observations’, Fellowship of Makers and Restorers of Historical Instruments: Bulletin and Communications, no.11 (1978), 60–64
W.F. Prizer: ‘Lutenists at the Court of Mantua in the late Fifteenth and early Sixteenth Centuries’, JLSA, xiii (1980), 5–34
D.A. Smith: ‘The Musical Instrument Inventory of Raymond Fugger’, GSJ, xxxiii (1980), 36–44
S. Toffolo: Antichi strumenti veneziani: 1500–1800, quattro secoli di liuteria e cembalaria (Venice, 1987)
S. Pasqual: ‘Laux Maler (c.1485–1552)’, Bollettino della società italiana del liuto, xxii (1997), 3–11; xxiii (1997), 4–13; Eng. trans. in Lute News, no.51 (1999), 5–15
LYNDA SAYCE