# Violin, the 'Duke of Alcantara' > Antonio Stradivari - 1732 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/antonio-stradivari/duke-of-alcantara-stradivarius-ucla/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-03 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Antonio Stradivari - **Date:** 1732 - **Medium:** Carved spruce top; maple back, ribs, neck and scroll; ebony fingerboard and fittings; oil varnish - **Dimensions:** Back length 35.6 cm; upper bout 16.9 cm; middle bout 11.3 cm; lower bout 20.8 cm - **Object type:** Musical instrument - **Period:** Italian, Cremonese school, eighteenth century (Stradivari's late period) - **Current location:** University of California, Los Angeles, Herb Alpert School of Music, held in secure vault storage (reported location: the Fowler Museum at UCLA) - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary A 1732 Stradivari violin, made in Cremona in the master's late eighties and named, on no documented basis, for an unidentified eighteenth-century Spanish nobleman. Donated to UCLA's Music Department in 1961 by Genevieve Vedder, widow of the oilman who had bought it, it disappeared from a graduate student's car in Pasadena on the evening of 2 August 1967 and was not seen again in public for twenty-seven years.It resurfaced in January 1994 when its then-possessor, Teresa Salvato, sent it for repair and two Petaluma violin makers matched it, from a standard reference catalogue of Stradivari photographs, to the missing UCLA instrument. Between Salvato and the original theft lay an uncorroborated roadside discovery, a woman who kept it unreported for sixteen years, and a divorce settlement, none of it disputed as a sequence of possession, all of it thin as an account of how the object actually moved. A Los Angeles Superior Court settlement returned it to UCLA on 1 December 1995, along with the companion violin and bows stolen alongside it, for a payment to Salvato equal to roughly one seventieth of the instrument's appraised value.UCLA still owns it. It lives in vault storage and comes out to be played by faculty and by student competition winners, a working instrument that happens to be one of 248 Stradivari violins known to survive, twice nearly sold off for budget reasons and twice kept. ## 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. - **undated** 'Duke of Alcantara' (unidentified individual) `[unknown]` (legendary attribution) The violin's name derives from a supposed eighteenth-century Spanish nobleman never identified by name, date or document in any source consulted. Treated here as unverified trade legend, not as an established provenance link. - **undated** Napoleon I of France (alleged) `[disputed]` (legendary attribution) Reported in secondary literature as an early nineteenth-century owner, with no supporting document located. - **-1925** Albert Caressa, dealer, Paris `[documented]` (dealer stock) First owner named with confidence in the sources consulted; sold the violin to Erich Lachmann of Berlin. - **c. 1925-1925** Erich Lachmann, collector, Berlin `[documented]` (purchase and resale) Held the violin briefly before selling to Dr. Steiner-Schweizer in Switzerland the same year; a Lachmann certificate remains on file. - **1925-1929** Dr. Steiner-Schweizer, Switzerland `[documented]` (purchase) Held the violin until its sale to the Rudolph Wurlitzer Co. in 1929. - **1929-c. 1945** Rudolph Wurlitzer Co., dealer, New York and Cincinnati `[documented]` (dealer stock) A Wurlitzer certificate (Cincinnati) remains on file; the firm sold the violin on to Ilya Schkolnik. - **c. 1945-late 1950s** Ilya Schkolnik, concertmaster, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra `[documented]` (purchase and professional use) Schkolnik, born Odessa 1890, had earlier been concertmaster of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra from 1918 under Ossip Gabrilowitsch. Sold the violin on relocating to Los Angeles. - **late 1950s-1961** Milton Vedder, oilman `[documented]` (purchase) No further biographical detail on Vedder was located. Died shortly after acquiring the instrument. - **1961** Genevieve Vedder, widow of Milton Vedder `[documented]` (gift) Donated the violin to UCLA's Music Department in 1961. - **1961-2 August 1967** University of California, Los Angeles, Music Department `[documented]` (institutional ownership and use) Performed on by Professor Marrocco Thomas during this period. Loaned to graduate student David Margetts, second violinist of the Feri Roth String Quartet, at the time of the theft. - **2 August 1967-1967** Unknown `[unknown]` (theft or loss) Disappeared from Margetts's car in Pasadena on the evening of 2 August 1967 while he shopped for groceries after a rehearsal. Margetts himself was reportedly unsure whether it was stolen from the car or lost from its roof. No thief was ever identified. - **1967-1978** Nadia Tupica, music store owner and retired teacher `[disputed]` (unreported possession) Claimed to have found the double case beside a freeway on-ramp shortly after the theft; the claim is uncorroborated. Kept the instrument, reportedly under her bed, without reporting it or having it examined, until her death in 1978. - **1978-1993** Jefferson Demarco, nephew of Nadia Tupica `[documented]` (inheritance) Inherited the instrument on his aunt's death; held it through his marriage to Teresa Salvato. - **1993-1995** Teresa Salvato, amateur violinist, Riverside, California `[documented]` (divorce settlement) Awarded the violin in her divorce from Jefferson Demarco in late 1993, apparently without either party knowing what it was. Identified as the missing UCLA Stradivari in January 1994 when she sent it for repair. Surrendered it to UCLA's Fowler Museum on 17 October 1994 under court pressure; received a $11,500 payment in the 1 December 1995 settlement. - **1 December 1995-present** University of California, Los Angeles, Herb Alpert School of Music `[documented]` (court-approved recovery) Regained sole possession by settlement in Regents of the University of California v. Teresa Salvato et al. (with related cross-action Margaret Coppin v. Teresa Salvato et al.), Los Angeles Superior Court, Docket No. BC 114151. Kept in vault storage, played by faculty and student competition winners; joined by a second Stradivari violin donated by the Twiford Foundation in 2020. ## Open questions - Who was the 'Duke of Alcantara' the instrument is named for? No source consulted identifies a specific historical individual, a date of ownership, or any document connecting a real Spanish nobleman of that title to this violin. - Is the claim that the violin was once owned by Napoleon I documented anywhere, or is it an undocumented legend repeated from one secondary source to the next? No primary source for it was located. - What exactly happened on the evening of 2 August 1967? Margetts himself was reportedly unsure whether the case was stolen from inside his car or left on its roof and lost. No surviving police report or insurance file was located to settle the question. - Is Nadia Tupica's account of finding the case on a freeway on-ramp true, or simply the story she told? It is uncorroborated, and no source explains why a music store owner would keep an unidentified violin for sixteen years without having it examined. - Who was Margaret Coppin, named in the related cross-action Margaret Coppin v. Teresa Salvato, et al. within the same Los Angeles Superior Court docket, BC 114151? No source consulted explains her identity or claim. - Did the 1994-95 dispute end in a reasoned judicial ruling on title, or purely in a negotiated settlement before any ruling? Press accounts describe an injunction and a payment, not a published opinion on ownership. - Was there a genuine, separate attempt to sell the violin during 1980s budget cuts, in addition to the 2006 episode, or have two retellings of a single episode been dated inconsistently across sources? - Has any technical study (dendrochronology, varnish analysis, X-radiography) of this specific instrument ever been published? None was located, despite this being exactly the kind of study that has resolved comparable authorship and dating questions on other late Stradivari instruments. ## Sources - [1] Wikipedia, 'Duke of Alcantara Stradivarius'. Tertiary; consolidates press coverage (Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Associated Press wire runs in the Vancouver Sun, Abilene Reporter-News and Press Democrat), Carla Shapreau's 1996 Strad magazine account, and the Los Angeles Superior Court docket (BC 114151) used for the theft, identification, litigation and settlement narrative in this record. Flagged for replacement with those primary press accounts, the Strad article and the court docket directly. - [2] Tarisio, Cozio Archive, 'Antonio Stradivari, Violin, Cremona, 1732, the Duke of Alcantara', Property ID 41405. - [3] Deseret News (Associated Press wire), 'Violin Returned on a Sour Note After 27 Years', 23 October 1994. - [4] UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, 'The Allure of a Stradivarius'. - [5] Stradivarius.org, 'The Duke of Alcantara'. Tertiary fan/reference site; flagged for replacement with Carla Shapreau's own account in The Strad, May 1996. - [6] Interlude.hk, 'The Shocking Stories of Three Missing Stradivarius Violins'. Used only to confirm that the Ex-Davidoff-Morini Stradivarius case is unrelated to the Duke of Alcantara. - [7] UCLA Newsroom, 'UCLA receives Stradivarius, Seraphin violins from Twiford Foundation', 10 February 2020. - [8] The Daily Beast, 'Who Stole Erica Morini's $3.5 Million Stradivarius Violin?'. Used only to confirm the Morini theft as a separate, unrelated case. - [9] Wikimedia Commons, File:Duke of Alcantara Stradivarius.jpg, photograph by Yinglong999, CC BY-SA 4.0. - [10] Wikimedia Commons, File:Duke of Alcantara 2.png, photograph by Yinglong999, CC BY-SA 4.0. - [11] Wikimedia Commons, File:UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music 1.jpg, photograph by Yinglong999, CC BY-SA 4.0. - [12] Wikimedia Commons, File:Violin by Ansaldo Poggi, Bologna.jpg, photograph by Pssviolin, CC BY-SA 3.0. - [13] Wikimedia Commons, File:ITA 1937 MiNr0592 pm B002.jpg, 1937 Kingdom of Italy commemorative postage stamp, public domain. - [14] Wikipedia, 'Ansaldo Poggi'. Used for the biography of the companion instrument's maker. - [15] Slippedisc, 'I left my Stradivarius on top of the car while I went shopping', December 2018, discussing David Margetts's account and citing attorney and violin maker Carla Shapreau on his efforts to locate the instrument. --- 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.