# Violoncello, the 'Marylebone' > Antonio Stradivari - 1688 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/antonio-stradivari/stradivari-marylebone-cello-axelrod-nmah/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-02 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Antonio Stradivari - **Date:** 1688 - **Medium:** Spruce top (multiple pieces), two-piece plain maple back with added corner wings, maple ribs and scroll, spirit varnish; ribs and pegbox carry a later applied decorative transfer - **Dimensions:** Overall, excluding tailpin: 121.92 x 43.5 x 24.77 cm (48 x 17 1/8 x 9 3/4 in), per the Smithsonian's own record. Length of back (the trade measurement used in violin-family cataloguing): 73 cm; upper bout 34.9 cm; middle bout 22.9 cm; lower bout 43.5 cm, per the Cozio Archive. - **Object type:** Musical instrument - **Period:** Italian (Cremonese school), late seventeenth century - **Current location:** Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American History (NMAH), Washington DC. Not currently on public display. - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary A working cello of 1688 by Antonio Stradivari that spent more than two centuries in the ordinary trade of English and European violin dealing before becoming, in 1985, the fourth piece of a matched set assembled for the collector Herbert R. Axelrod. Unlike its three companions, this cello was never decorated by Stradivari himself: the ornament on its ribs and pegbox is a twentieth-century transfer copying a genuinely decorated Stradivari cello in the Spanish royal collection, added so the instrument would visually complete a 'quartet of decorated instruments.' The cellist Anner Bylsma called it, accurately, the tattooed cello.The Axelrods gave the completed quartet to the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, where it was valued at 50 million dollars, a figure the U.S. Senate Finance Committee later moved to question alongside a separate, unrelated federal tax fraud case against the donor. The cello itself carries no accusation of fakery or theft; the dispute that touched it was about what the whole gift was declared to be worth, not about what the instrument is.It is now part of the Smithsonian's working collection of historical instruments, played on occasion by the museum's own curator-cellist, and is currently off public view. ## 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. - **1688** Made by Antonio Stradivari, Cremona `[documented]` (origin) Original Stradivari label survives in the instrument. Built to Stradivari's larger, pre-1707 cello outline, later reduced in size. - **unknown-c. 1821 or before** Unrecorded owner; instrument reduced in size `[documented]` (modification) The cello was cut down from its original larger proportions, in the stated opinion of Alfred E. Hill's 1928 certificate probably by the London maker and dealer John Betts, whose shop is separately documented handling this and other large Stradivari cellos. The Cozio Archive's own listing places a 'John Betts' ownership entry and related names (Harford, a Rudolph Wurlitzer Co. transaction) in a position inconsistent with Betts's death in 1823; this record leaves the exact date of the reduction and the ordering of these entries unresolved rather than reconciling them by guesswork. - **unknown-1821** Heinrich Glatz `[documented]` (ownership) Owned the cello until 1821, per the Cozio Archive. - **1821-c. 1880** James Cazenove, member of a family of financiers `[documented]` (purchase) Owned from 1821. One half of the instrument's working name. - **1880-unknown** Alexander Rivaz `[documented]` (ownership) Owned from 1880. - **unknown-1911** Mr. Payne, of Marylebone, London `[documented]` (ownership) Held the cello until 1911; described in the Cozio Archive as a somewhat eccentric collector of instruments of very mixed quality. Supplies the other half of the working name. - **1911-1928** W. E. Hill & Sons, then Hamma & Co. of Stuttgart `[documented]` (dealer sale) Hill and Sons acquired the cello in 1911 and it passed through Hamma and Co. before Hill and Sons reacquired it in 1928 and issued Alfred E. Hill's certificate describing the reduction and the retouched varnish. - **1933-1937** Rudolph Wurlitzer Co., New York `[documented]` (dealer sale) Held the cello from 1933; sold to Gustav Pistor by or in 1937. - **1937-unknown** Dr. Gustav Pistor `[documented]` (ownership) Owned from 1937. No further date is given in the source consulted. - **unknown-1985** Unrecorded `[unknown]` (gap) No owner or transaction is documented between Pistor's 1937 ownership and Axelrod's 1985 acquisition, a gap of roughly five decades. - **1985-1997** Dr. Herbert R. Axelrod `[documented]` (purchase and decoration) Acquired 1985, the same year the dealer Jacques Francais published an illustrated book on the completed Axelrod quartet; the sources consulted do not state whether Francais personally brokered this specific purchase. During Axelrod's ownership the cello received the applied decorative transfer copying the Spanish royal quartet's 1696 cello. - **1997-2000** Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American History `[documented]` (gift, formally accessioned) Axelrod converted a long-standing loan to the Smithsonian into an outright gift in late 1997, reported in Smithsonian magazine in August 1998 and widely dated to 1998 in secondary sources; the Smithsonian's own accession number, 2000.0013, carries a year prefix consistent with formal registration of the gift in 2000. Both dates are documented in different kinds of source and this record does not collapse them into one. - **2000-present** Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American History `[documented]` (current holding) On public display with the rest of the Axelrod Quartet from at least 1998 until 2012; not currently on view. Occasionally used in performance by the museum's curator of musical instruments. ## Open questions - Where, exactly, does John Betts's probable reduction of the cello and the associated names of Harford and a 1929-dated Wurlitzer transaction belong in the ownership sequence? The Cozio Archive lists them in a way that is chronologically inconsistent with Betts's death in 1823, and this record has not guessed at the correct placement. - Who owned or held the cello between Dr. Gustav Pistor's recorded ownership from 1937 and Herbert Axelrod's acquisition in 1985? No source consulted documents this roughly fifty-year span. - Exactly when, and on whose specific instruction, was the decorative transfer copying the Madrid cello applied to this instrument? The Cozio Archive attributes the idea to Axelrod but does not give a date narrower than his 1985-1997 ownership. - What, if anything, did the Senate Finance Committee's 2004 inquiry into the Axelrod donation conclude about this specific gift's valuation? No source consulted reports an outcome. - Why did the Axelrod Quartet, on view at NMAH since 1964, come off public display in 2012, and does the museum have any stated plan to return it to view? - What was the resolution, if any, of the discrepancy between the instruments' 50 million dollar valuation at the time of the 1998 gift and the 15 to 26 million dollar range reported in later appraisals? ## Sources - [1] Smithsonian Institution / National Museum of American History, object record for the Stradivarius Violoncello 'The Marylebon' (nmah_739717). - [2] Smithsonian Institution / National Museum of American History, object record for the Stradivarius Viola 'The Axelrod' (nmah_739716), used for comparison of decoration and dimensions across the quartet. - [3] Wikipedia, 'Axelrod quartet'. Tertiary source; flagged for replacement with the Smithsonian's own catalogue essay on the quartet if one is published. - [4] Tarisio, Cozio Archive, 'Antonio Stradivari, Cello, Cremona, 1688, the Cazenove, Marylebone' (Property ID 41432), including the W. E. Hill & Sons 1928 certificate summary, the literature list, and the Anner Bylsma 'tattooed cello' quotation. - [5] Smithsonian Magazine, 'Sharing the Gift of Music', August 1998, on the Axelrod donation, Gary Sturm's role, and the Chamber Music Society endowment. - [6] Smithsonian Magazine / Smithsonian Voices, 'Sound Scholarship', on Kenneth Slowik's performance on the Marylebone cello and the museum's instrument collection. - [7] Wikipedia, 'Herbert R. Axelrod', for the donor's biography, the 1998 donation, the New Jersey Symphony sale, the tax fraud indictment, flight, arrest, sentencing and death. Tertiary source; flagged for replacement with contemporary news reporting and the DOJ press releases it cites. - [8] The Strad, obituary, 'Stringed instrument collector and tropical fish expert Herbert Axelrod has died, aged 89', on the valuation controversy following the Smithsonian and New Jersey Symphony gifts. - [9] U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, press release, 'Grassley Seeks Details of Instrument Donation, Highlights Need for IRS Whistleblower Incentives', May 3, 2004, on the Committee's inquiry into the 1998 Axelrod donation's valuation. Retrieved via search summary of the Committee's own page; direct access to finance.senate.gov was blocked by the site during research and the wording should be checked against the primary page before being quoted verbatim. - [10] Wikipedia, 'Antonio Stradivari', for the maker's biography, training, workshop, family, output and the Museo del Violino tools. Tertiary source; flagged for replacement with a scholarly biography such as the Hill brothers' Antonio Stradivari: His Life and Work. - [11] Smithsonian Chamber Music Society, 'The Axelrod String Quartet', on the ensemble's formation, members and use of the donated instruments. - [12] Wikipedia, 'Servais Stradivarius', on the separate, undecorated Smithsonian Stradivari cello displayed alongside the Axelrod Quartet, used here only to prevent confusion between the two instruments. --- 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.