Octave virginal
Date1520-1540 ca.
Place MadeNaples, Italy, Europe
Serial No.none
DescriptionSixteenth- and seventeenth-century Neapolitan harpsichords, clavichords, and virginals such as this one are stylistically distinct from those made elsewhere in Italy. Typical features of Neapolitan virginals include their rectangular (not polygonal) cases, dovetailed corners, maple cases, placement of the left-hand bridge on a solid wrest plank behind the jacks (not on acoustically active soundboard with the wrest plank at the right end of the case), strings markedly angled (not almost parallel) relative to the length of the case, and scalings suitable for brass strings throughout the compass. Compass: C/E-c3 (4 octaves)
Case and wrest plank of maple. Soundboard of fir. There are no soundbars or cutoff bar. Gothic-style rose made of two layers of wood glued to the soundboard.
DimensionsMeasurements not including moldings:
Length
Back: 785 mm
Front: 786 mm
Height
Left side: 149 mm
Right side: 148 mm
Width
Left side: 248 mm
Right side: 247.5 mm
3-octave compass: 484-485 mm
String length: c2: 161.5 mm
ProvenancePurchased in 1989 from Bernhard von Hünerbein, Cologne, Germany.
Published ReferencesKoster, John. "A Comment on FoMRHI Comm. 1150," FoMRHI Quarterly, No. 71 (April 1993), Communication 1166, pp. 36-37.
-------. Keyboard Instruments in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1994), pp. 9-10.
-------. “Conservator Unravels Mystery . . . Keyboard Instruments Raced Back to 16th-Century Naples,” The Shrine to Music Museum Newsletter 23, No. 1 (October 1995) pp. 1-3
-------. "The Early Neapolitan School of Harpsichord Making," in Domenico Scarlatti en España / Domenico Scarlatti in Spain, Luisa Morales, ed. (Garrucha, Almería, Spain: AsociaciónCultural LEAL, 2009), pp. 47-80 (especially p. 53 and 74 and figs. 3, 7, 11, 12, and 13).
Kuronen, Darcy. "Keyboard Instruments at The Shrine to Music Museum," Early Keyboard Studies Newsletter, Vol. VI, No. 1 (October 1991), p. 7.
Wraight, Denzil. "An Attribution of an Unsigned Spinet," FoMRHI Quarterly, No. 70 (January 1993), Communication 1150, pp. 45-46.
Credit LineArne B. and Jeanne F. Larson Fund, 1989
Object number04660
On View
On view
