Violins built by the Italian violin maker Antonio Stradivari (1644?–1737) have a special mystique in the classical music world. They’re also extremely expensive. In 2011 an anonymous buyer paid the record sum of $15.9 million for a violin—named “Lady Blunt” after Lady Anne Blunt, one of its previous owners—which was considered by experts to be the second best-preserved of Stradivari’s creations.
And what about the best-preserved Stradivarius? Tellingly nicknamed “the Messiah,” it sits in a climate-controlled case in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England, receiving the kind of curatorial attention and care reserved for precious works of art. Of the more than 1,200 instruments built by Stradivari over his 60-year career, about 500 are still in circulation today.
