Fiorenzo COPERTINI AMATI

Fiorenzo Copertini Amati was born in Florence in 1937. He obtained a diploma in painting at the Accademia di Brera in Milan . In the 1980s he gave up his high school teaching post and became the sole pupil of Lapo Casini, for whom he edited the updated reprint of his research in “ Alla riscoperta della vernice degli antichi liutai ” (Rediscovering the varnish of the violin-makers of old). On his maestro's death, he inherited his laboratory materials and documents. He turned his attention to introducing recent methodologies in the study of organology and critical analysis. He explained the system of how violin plates function and are tuned as a “couple of risonators”. He is a member of the Associazione Liutaria Italiana management board and scientific committee. He as tutored numerous pupils and taught at the Regional Professional Centre in Bisignano. His limited production of instruments is founded on classic methods of construction and, for some years now, on the importance of the methods as adopted by the Guarneri family for tightening the tension of plates. He has taken the constructive and formal features of Caterina Rota's violins, distinguishing their specificity within the series attributed to her husband, Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù, as “servant” or “prison” violins, and he uses the same model. At the moment is also using the one derived from C. Bergonzi. The varnish is of linseed oil made soluble in spirits, together with resins and organic pigments; the preparation of the ground is with calcium caseinate. He uses an interior mould, the linings are in pine or willow inserted in the corner bloks; the maximum height of the cover is under the fingerboard. Dimension of the belly 35.3 cm ; the diapason veries according to the model.

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