# Violin, the 'Lady Blunt'
> Antonio Stradivari - 1721
> Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/antonio-stradivari/lady-blunt-stradivarius-1721/
> Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-28
## Tombstone
- **Artist:** Antonio Stradivari
- **Date:** 1721
- **Medium:** Spruce top, maple back, ribs and neck, on a wood body varnished in a rich red-brown oil varnish; gut and metal-wound strings (not original)
- **Dimensions:** Back length 35.7 cm; upper bouts 16.8 cm; lower bouts 20.9 cm
- **Object type:** Musical instrument
- **Period:** Italian, early eighteenth century, Stradivari's 'golden period'
- **Current location:** Private collection, owner not publicly identified
- **Attribution:** accepted
## Summary
A violin made by Antonio Stradivari in Cremona in 1721, during the decade of his career now called the golden period, and one of a small number of his instruments to survive in something close to the condition it left his workshop in. It takes its name from Lady Anne Blunt, the daughter of Ada Lovelace and granddaughter of Lord Byron, who bought it from the dealer Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume in 1864 and owned it for thirty years before selling it in 1895, more than two decades before her death in 1917.After passing through a documented chain of dealers and collectors across the twentieth century, the violin was bought by the Nippon Music Foundation of Japan in 2008. In June 2011, nine days after the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, the Foundation sold it through Tarisio for GBP 9,808,000 (USD 15,894,000) including buyer's premium, against a hammer price of GBP 8,750,000, with every proceed pledged to disaster relief in northeastern Japan. It was, at the time, the highest price ever paid for a violin at auction.The buyer has never been publicly identified, and the instrument has not been seen or loaned in public since the sale. Its condition, judged among the best-preserved of Stradivari's output by dealers who have examined it, and its charitable sale in the week after a national catastrophe, are the two facts that distinguish this violin from the roughly six hundred other surviving instruments bearing his label.
## 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.
- **1721-c. 1860** Unrecorded `[unknown]` (gap)
No owner is documented between the violin's making in Cremona in 1721 and its emergence in Spain in the possession of Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume around 1860. Vuillaume reported it as having been forgotten for over a century before it reached him.
- **c. 1860-1864** Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume, Paris `[documented]` (acquisition and conservation)
Vuillaume, the leading Parisian dealer of old Italian instruments, acquired the violin out of Spain and carried out limited conservation, including re-angling the neck at the heel to the modern standard. His own letter describes the instrument's exceptional, largely untouched condition on arrival.
- **1864-1895** Lady Anne Blunt (later 15th Baroness Wentworth) `[documented]` (purchase, ownership and sale)
Bought from Vuillaume in 1864 for 260 pounds sterling on the recommendation of her teacher Leopold Jansa. Owned and reportedly played the instrument for over thirty years before selling it in 1895 through the dealers Charles Withers and Emil Hamma to the Frankfurt dealer Charles F. Edler. This sale took place more than two decades before her death in 1917; no source connects it to any documented family financial difficulty.
- **1895-1896** Charles F. Edler, Frankfurt `[documented]` (purchase)
Acquired via Withers and Hamma in 1895; sold to W.E. Hill and Sons the following year.
- **1896** W.E. Hill and Sons, London `[documented]` (purchase and immediate resale)
Bought from Edler and sold on immediately to Baron Johann Knoop. Arthur Hill's contemporary note that the firm had 'for years... cast longing eyes upon it' is recorded in the Hill archive.
- **1896-1900** Baron Johann Knoop `[documented]` (purchase)
Major collector who at his peak owned around forty old instruments, including some nineteen Stradivaris.
- **1900-1901** W.E. Hill and Sons, London `[documented]` (repurchase and resale)
Reacquired from the Knoop estate and sold to Johann Kruse.
- **1901-1913** Johann Kruse `[documented]` (purchase)
Australian-born violinist, a former member of the Joachim Quartet (1892-1897); the only owner in this chain who was primarily a performer.
- **1913-1915** Joseph Edward Street `[documented]` (purchase)
Amateur violinist based in Caterham, England.
- **1915** W.E. Hill and Sons, London `[documented]` (purchase and resale)
Intermediate dealer transaction between Street and Bennett.
- **1915-1926** Richard Bennett `[documented]` (purchase)
Major collector who at various points owned more than twenty Stradivaris.
- **1926-1941** Robert Augustus Bower `[disputed]` (purchase via W.E. Hill and Sons)
Collector and recognised violin expert of the period. Sources disagree on Bower's role here: the Cozio Archive's own Carteggio narrative describes him only as the dealer who arranged Hill and Sons' 1941 sale to Henry Werro, not as an intermediate owner, while other summaries of the Cozio Archive property record place him as owner between Bennett and Werro. This record could not resolve the discrepancy or confirm the 1926 and 1941 endpoint dates against the archive's raw record; treat this entry as provisional.
- **1941-1959** Henry Werro `[documented]` (purchase)
Swiss dealer and maker, eldest son of the maker Jean Werro. Published a monograph on the violin in 1943 in an edition of two hundred copies.
- **1959-1971** Sam Bloomfield, California `[documented]` (purchase)
American collector; consigned the violin to Sotheby's in 1971.
- **1971-2000** Robin Loh, Singapore `[documented]` (purchase at auction)
Bought at Sotheby's, 1971, for GBP 84,500 (then a world record for a violin at auction), through W.E. Hill and Sons. Lent the violin to the 1987 Cremona exhibition marking the Stradivari tercentenary.
- **2000-2008** Private collector, not publicly identified `[documented]` (purchase via W.E. Hill and Sons)
Identity not disclosed in sources consulted for this record.
- **2008-2011** Nippon Music Foundation, Japan `[documented]` (private purchase)
Reported at the time as worth 'over ten million US dollars'; precise figure not published.
- **2011-present** Private collector, anonymous `[documented]` (purchase at Tarisio online sale)
Sold 20 June 2011 for a hammer price of GBP 8,750,000 (GBP 9,808,000 / USD 15,894,000 including buyer's premium), all proceeds pledged to Nippon Music Foundation's Northeastern Japan Earthquake and Tsunami Relief Fund. Buyer's identity has never been made public; no ownership, loan or exhibition activity has been traced since.
## Auction results
Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so.
- **1971** Sotheby's,
- Estimate: not stated in sources consulted
- Hammer: GBP 84,500
- With premium: not specified in sources consulted
- Sold to Robin Loh via W.E. Hill and Sons; a world record price for a violin at auction at the time, roughly USD 200,000 at contemporaneous exchange rates.
- **2011-06-20** Tarisio,
- Estimate: Low estimate of USD 10,000,000
- Hammer: GBP 8,750,000
- With premium: GBP 1,058,000 (total with premium GBP 9,808,000, reported as USD 15,894,000)
- Online sale conducted by Tarisio; sources consistently and explicitly separate the GBP 8,750,000 hammer price from the GBP 9,808,000 total including buyer's premium, and this record follows that separation. Tarisio's online format runs on the same hammer-plus-premium structure as a conventional saleroom rather than a single all-in private-treaty figure. Sold by the Nippon Music Foundation, all proceeds pledged to Tohoku earthquake and tsunami relief. Reported at the time as more than four times the previous Stradivari auction record and as the highest price ever paid for any violin at auction.
## Open questions
- Where was the violin between its completion in 1721 and its emergence in Vuillaume's hands in Spain around 1860? A gap of well over a century is undocumented in the sources consulted.
- What was the exact purchase price the Nippon Music Foundation paid in 2008? Reported only as 'over ten million US dollars' in contemporary coverage, with no more precise figure located.
- Who is the current owner, and has the instrument been played, exhibited, or loaned since June 2011? No public record of any kind has been traced since the sale.
- Has any dendrochronological or scientific study beyond John Topham's tree-ring dating been published on this specific instrument, and is any high-resolution imaging or CT data publicly available for research use?
- What became of Henry Werro's 1943 monograph on the violin, printed in only two hundred copies, and does a copy exist in a library accessible to researchers?
- Was Robert Augustus Bower an owner of the violin between Richard Bennett and Henry Werro (as one summary of the Cozio Archive property record suggests, and as this record's provenance table provisionally reflects), or only the dealer who arranged Hill and Sons' 1941 sale to Werro (as the Cozio Archive's own Carteggio narrative states)? This record could not resolve the discrepancy, or confirm the 1926 and 1941 endpoint dates, against the archive's primary record.
## Sources
- [1] Tarisio, 'The 1721 Lady Blunt Stradivari violin, sold by Tarisio', Cozio Archive Carteggio.
- [2] Tarisio, ''Lady Blunt' Stradivarius of 1721', Notable Sales.
- [3] Tarisio Cozio Archive, property record for Antonio Stradivari, violin, Cremona, 1721, 'the Lady Blunt', ID 24222 - the primary provenance, condition and dendrochronology record for this instrument.
- [4] The Strad, '1721 'Lady Blunt' Stradivari violin sells for GBP 9.8m', reporting the hammer price of GBP 8,750,000 separately from the GBP 9,808,000 total with buyer's premium.
- [5] Benning Violins, 'Carl Becker and the Lady Blunt Stradivarius Violin', on the 1970-71 repair before the Sotheby's sale.
- [6] CBS News, 'Stradivarius sold for nearly $16M to aid Japan', including the quotes from Tarisio director Jason Price and Nippon Music Foundation president Kazuko Shiomi.
- [7] Bloomberg, 'Stradivarius Sells for $15.9 Million to Help Japan Quake Relief'.
- [8] Tarisio, 'Antonio Stradivari' maker biography, Cozio Archive.
- [9] Tarisio, 'Stradivari and his sons, part 1', Cozio Archive Carteggio, on Francesco, Omobono and the workshop's internal forms, and on Giovanni Battista Martino following the 1995 discovery of Stradivari's testament.
- [10] Wikimedia Commons, file description noting that a long-circulated portrait captioned as Antonio Stradivari has been identified as a portrait of Claudio Monteverdi. Flagged as a Commons file description rather than a scholarly publication; suitable for replacement with a published art-historical source on the Stradivari portrait question.
- [11] Wikipedia, 'Lady Blunt Stradivarius'. Tertiary source, consulted for cross-checking dates and figures against the Tarisio and press sources above; flagged for replacement with the Cozio Archive record (source 3) as the primary authority wherever the two differ.
- [12] Wikipedia, 'Anne Blunt, 15th Baroness Wentworth'. Tertiary source, consulted for biographical detail on Lady Anne Blunt's family, marriage and death; flagged for replacement with a published biography such as Rosemary Archer and James Fleming's editions of Anne Blunt's journals and correspondence.
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