# ex "Kurtz" Violin > Andrea Amati - ca. 1560 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/andrea-amati/amati-ex-kurtz-violin-met/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-20 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Andrea Amati - **Date:** ca. 1560 - **Medium:** Spruce, maple, ebony, paint, gilding - **Dimensions:** Overall height 57.4 cm (22 5/8 in.); width 20.2 cm (7 15/16 in.) (Metropolitan Museum). Back length 35.6 cm; upper bouts 16.2 cm; middle bouts 11 cm; lower bouts 20.2 cm (Cozio Archive component measurements). - **Object type:** Musical instrument - **Period:** Italian Renaissance, Cremona, sixteenth century - **Current location:** Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Department of Musical Instruments, Gallery 684 - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary A violin from the workshop that invented the violin. Andrea Amati of Cremona is credited with fixing the instrument's modern proportions, and this example, dated by the Metropolitan Museum to about 1560, is among the small number of his instruments to survive with anything like their original decoration: a gold Latin motto on the ribs, fleurs-de-lis on the back, and the ghost of an effaced coat of arms. The Museum has floated, cautiously, a connection to the 1559 marriage of Philip II of Spain to Elisabeth of Valois, on the strength of a decorated sister instrument in Paris; no document ties this specific violin to that wedding, and the Museum's own language treats the idea as speculation, not fact.The violin is not the same instrument as any of the surviving pieces from Amati's better documented royal commission, the decorated set made across the 1560s and 1570s for Charles IX of France, several of which survive elsewhere including the celebrated "King" cello in Vermillion, South Dakota. That set carries a different Latin motto and a different history, and the two groups should not be conflated.Its documented ownership history begins abruptly in nineteenth century England, runs through a chain of London and New York dealers and private owners including the violinist and instrument scholar Edward Heron-Allen, and ends with the New York musician and music educator Arved Kurtz, whose name the violin now carries. The Museum acquired it in 1999, four years after Kurtz's death, through the Robert Alonzo Lehman Bequest. Roughly three centuries between the workshop and the first named nineteenth century owner remain completely undocumented. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **ca. 1560** Workshop of Andrea Amati, Cremona `[documented]` (origin) Attribution to Andrea Amati is accepted and supported by dendrochronology of the spruce top; the exact year is disputed between the Metropolitan Museum (about 1560, range 1558-1565) and the Cozio Archive (about 1570). Possible but unconfirmed connection to a set of instruments associated with the 1559 marriage of Philip II of Spain and Elisabeth of Valois, argued from decorative comparison to a related violetta in the Musee de la Musique, Paris, not from a document naming this instrument. - **ca. 1560/1570-mid-19th century** Unknown `[unknown]` (gap) No owner, location, or transaction is documented for roughly two and a half to three centuries. This is the largest undocumented span in the object's history. - **unrecorded** "Oliphant" `[unknown]` (ownership) Earliest name in the Cozio Archive's provenance chain for this instrument; no further identification, dates, or biographical detail located in sources consulted. - **unrecorded-1873** Miss Irene Pellew `[documented]` (ownership) Per the Cozio Archive's compiled provenance for this instrument (Property ID 40073). - **1873** Sir Louis Mallet, and separately Michael Longridge `[documented]` (sale) Sold in 1873 via the London dealer Edward Withers to Sir Louis Mallet; the Cozio Archive's chain also records a purchase by Michael Longridge around the same date via the dealer George Withers & Sons. The exact sequence of these 1873 transactions is not fully explained in the sources consulted. - **1873-1885** George Soames `[documented]` (ownership) Per the Cozio Archive. - **1885-1890** Edward Heron-Allen `[documented]` (ownership) London writer, palmist, and violin scholar; author of the 1885 reference work Violin-Making, As It Was and Is. - **1890-1896** Sidney Courtauld `[documented]` (ownership) Per the Cozio Archive. - **1896-1923** W. E. Hill & Sons `[documented]` (dealer stock) London dealership; issued a certificate for the instrument. - **1923** Miss Hilda Barry `[documented]` (ownership) Per the Cozio Archive. - **1923-1927** Rudolph Wurlitzer Co. `[documented]` (dealer stock) American dealership; exact dates of handling not specified beyond falling between Hilda Barry's ownership and Emil Herrmann's. - **1927-1930** Emil Herrmann `[documented]` (dealer stock) New York violin dealer; issued a certificate for the instrument. - **1930** Dr. Steiner-Schweizer `[documented]` (ownership) Per the Cozio Archive. - **1930-1940** Robert L. Dennison `[documented]` (ownership) Per the Cozio Archive. - **1940-1941** Harry Wahl `[documented]` (ownership) Per the Cozio Archive. - **1941-1995** Arved Kurtz `[documented]` (ownership) New York-based violinist, conductor, and music educator (born Saint Petersburg, 29 June 1899; died New York, 23 March 1995), director then president of the New York College of Music from 1945 to 1965. The instrument's popular name derives from him. The Cozio Archive's own listing gives his ownership dates loosely as 1941 onward; his death date of 1995 is taken from an independent biographical source, four years before the Museum's 1999 acquisition, leaving the exact transfer mechanism (estate sale, dealer intermediary, or otherwise) undocumented. - **1999-present** Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York `[documented]` (acquisition) Purchase, Robert Alonzo Lehman Bequest, 1999. Accession number 1999.26. Purchase price not published in sources consulted. The purchase fund's namesake has not been independently identified and should not be assumed identical to the banker Robert Lehman (1891-1969) of the Museum's separate Robert Lehman Collection. ## Open questions - Who was "Oliphant", the earliest recorded owner in the Cozio Archive's provenance chain, and when did that ownership fall? No further identification is given in the sources consulted. - Where was the violin, and in whose hands, between its making around 1560-1570 and its first documented nineteenth century owner? A gap of roughly two and a half to three centuries carries no recorded name. - Why do the Metropolitan Museum (about 1560) and the Cozio Archive (about 1570) date the same instrument a decade apart? No source consulted explains or reconciles the discrepancy. - Is the link between this violin and the 1559 marriage of Philip II of Spain and Elisabeth of Valois anything more than a decorative resemblance to one related instrument in Paris? No document naming this specific violin in connection with that commission has been located in the sources consulted. - What price did the Metropolitan Museum pay for the violin in 1999? Not published in any source consulted. - By what mechanism did the violin pass from Arved Kurtz's estate, after his death in 1995, to the Museum's 1999 acquisition? Not documented in the sources consulted. - Who was "Robert Alonzo Lehman", namesake of the purchase fund, and is he related to the banker Robert Lehman (1891-1969) of the Robert Lehman Collection at the same Museum? Not established in the sources consulted. ## Sources - [1] Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection API, object record for accession 1999.26 (object ID 503517): title, artist, date range, medium, dimensions, credit line, department, gallery, image URLs, and public domain status. - [2] Metropolitan Museum of Art, object page for accession 1999.26, "Andrea Amati, ex 'Kurtz' Violin". Description and provenance-speculation text verified via cached mirrors of the Museum's own catalogue copy (the live page returned repeated rate-limit errors on direct fetch during research). - [3] Tarisio, Cozio Archive, property record for "Andrea Amati, Violin, Cremona, 1570, the 'Kurtz, Metropolitan'" (Property ID 40073): dimensions, condition description, and compiled ownership chain from Oliphant to the Metropolitan Museum. - [4] Tarisio, Cozio Archive, maker record for Andrea Amati (Maker ID 7): biography and list of individually catalogued surviving instruments, including the Kurtz, Metropolitan violin. - [5] Tarisio, Cozio Carteggio, "Andrea Amati, part 2": workshop chronology, the Charles IX commission, the Quo Unico/Spanish decorated group, and the attribution question regarding Antonio Amati's role in instruments credited to Andrea. - [6] Tarisio, Cozio Archive, property record for the Andrea Amati "King, Il Re, Witten-Rawlins" cello (Property ID 40046): Charles IX set motto (Pietate et Iustitia), 1801 reduction by Sebastien Renault, and current location at the National Music Museum. - [7] The Strad, "From the Archive: Andrea Amati, 1564 'Charles IX' violin from the Ashmolean Museum collection": dating and scope of the surviving Charles IX decorated group. - [8] Wikipedia, "Andrea Amati": general biography and summary mention of the Metropolitan's violin and the Philip II set theory. Flagged for replacement with a peer-reviewed or catalogue source; this record follows the Museum's own more detailed catalogue description (source 2) rather than this article's claim that the violin retains its original neck, which conflicts with the Museum's own condition description. - [9] Wikipedia (German), "Arved Kurtz": biography of the violin's most recent private owner, including birth and death dates, training, and career. - [10] Wikipedia, "Elizabeth of Valois": biography and marriage context, used for the 1559 marriage to Philip II of Spain and the Peace of Cateau-Cambresis, the historical event the Museum has speculatively linked to this violin's decoration. - [11] Alamy stock photo caption reproducing the Metropolitan Museum's own catalogue description of the violin, including construction detail (one-piece maple back, unfigured maple scroll and pegbox grafted onto a modern neck, spruce top) and condition notes on varnish and gilding. - [12] Wikimedia Commons, category "Ex 'Kurtz' Violin (ca. 1560) by Andrea Amati, Cremona, Italy. MET 1999.26": confirms the set of Museum open-access photographs of this object and their file names. - [13] Wikimedia Commons, file page for "Ex 'Kurtz' Violin MET DP147090.jpg": confirms CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication license for the Museum's mirrored open-access photographs of this object. - [14] Wikipedia, "Robert Lehman": biography of the banker and collector Robert Lehman (1891-1969), used to note that his separate Robert Lehman Collection bequest should not be conflated with the differently named Robert Alonzo Lehman Bequest that funded this violin's 1999 purchase. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.