----- Original Message ----- From: "rosinfiorini" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, December 01, 2004 7:59 PM Subject: also Viola picture
> > > actually, i made the image paler and enlarges and it becomes apparent that it is simply the way the bridge is drawn (its shadow) that looks like a dark stripe. > I'm not very good at drawing with the mouse, but here i enlarged the image and drew the way the bridge actually is shaped (IMHO).. it's here: http://perso.wanadoo.fr/raydimitry/imagini/Viola].jpg > :) but then, it might be a _broken_ bridge, in two pieces, and perhaps even a bridge from a larger instrument, because even the remaining piece being used currently is raising the strings too high and too wide. Maybe the bridge is from a larger, later, dedicated (and 6 stringed) bowed viola and the only way to make it fit is to break off the top half, use it, save the broke bit where we see it stored now? If you were to stack those two bits on top of each other I think the action would then be outrageously high. If you stood the broken base up and placed the bowing edge back on top of it, that might narrow the percieved string spacing as it approaches the neck and on towards the nut, though. I 'm still thinking this is a conversion chop-job of some kind. Probably an older 5 string plucked viola repurposed as a 6 string gamba. The fretboard looks flat-on-the-deck, and that diamond rosette detail at the foot of the fretboard is seen in a narrow band of time on 5 course lutes (if I recall right from Van Edwards' web site), something like 1450-90. Look at the side profile of this 1503 gamba (far left) . . . http://www.thecipher.com/violAngelConsort1503lrg.jpg . . . see the elevated fretboard (lets the top vibrate more freely) and dished out face. That appears to me to be a later design refinement -- one that was to be retained thereafter (once it cought on and spread widely). See the neck joint on this reproduction 17th cent viol, elevated, wide, and radiused . . http://www.thecipher.com/viol_neck_joint.jpg that's what I mean about the difference between the fretboard on the Viti instrument being flat, and flat on the deck, guitar and lute style, not elevated in later gamba style. The Viti viol looks old technology by comparison, guitaresque, and maybe even 5 string originally -- the neck is just too narrow. It's also proportionally very long, long like the Borgia plucked viola http://www.thecipher.com/violasineacrulo_Borgia1493bw.jpg If not a broken bowing bridge in two pieces, it could still be a plucking bridge tucked away and an ill fitting, ill seated, entirely improvised bowing bridge currently in place. I don't know any more ;') I sure wish we could see a good photo of the painting and in color. That would remove a lot of speculation and wrong alleys. whatever it is, it sure is strange, and interesting -- that the artist left it like that, purposely not prettying it up. It certainly does add interest -- to whit this discussion and incident ;') -- as yet unresoved. I never expected nor even wanted to find a dual bridge specimen (if that's what it is). That the two types, plucked and bowed, are so obvouisly related though, so close in anatomy, tuned and played the same way, played by the same persons, that we can even talk about them so easily in the same breath, is really the point. Any way you look at it they are very close siblings. Roger > ------------------------------------------ > > Faites un voeu et puis Voila ! www.voila.fr > > > -- > > To get on or off this list see list information at > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
![http://perso.wanadoo.fr/raydimitry/imagini/Viola].jpg](http://perso.wanadoo.fr/raydimitry/imagini/Viola].jpg){kind=link}
