A rare, nearly 300-year-old violin that has been in the collection of the late businessman Sau-Wing Lam and exhibited twice at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York will be auctioned at Tarisio next month, with an estimate in excess of US$10 million.
The instrument, circa 1731, is one of only about 150 known violins handmade by Italian master Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù, one of the three great violin-making families in Cremona, Italy. Compared to Stradivari violins of the same era, Guarneri violins have deeper and more sonorous tones and were prized by such musicians as Isaac Stern, Jascha Heifetz, and Itzhak Perlman, according to Tarisio, a New York-based auction house specializing in fine and rare stringed instruments and bows.
