There is so much literature about the history of violins that I will not try to better or even to equal those well-known works of Heron-Allen, Moeckel, or Lutgendorff. Generally, it is accepted that the first violins in the form we know now were made in approximately the year 1500. Before this time, bowed instruments were made which are interesting as forerunners of the violin. They were of course, decorated, painted, or varnished and mainly used in churches.

     As the oldest known Italian violins from Brescia and Cremona were varnished with varnish which has the characteristics of the Italian varnish we admire so much, it is safe to assume that this varnish had been used before 1500. It is also very likely that this varnish was not only used for musical instruments, but widely used for the decoration and preserving of finer furniture or "objets d'art." Music and painting were for a large part used in churches and for religious purposes. The relation between the decoration of instruments and the paintings of mostly religious subjects seems quite natural to me. Sir Charles Lock Eastlake's, Materials for a History of Oil Painting, volume two, page 270 mentions: "The careful execution of Correggio paintings would probably lead him to prefer the finest and firmest of the ancient oil varnishes, the amber varnish. And the painter Gentilesche tells us that in his time all paint and colour vendors in Italy sold the amber varnish used by varnishers of lutes." Further, "There would hardly be a more convenient place than Mantua, in the vicinity of Cremona, for obtaining amber varnish of good quality." Thus, it is probable that Correggio used amber varnish as a protective coat for his finished paintings. In Eastlake, volume one, page 304, we read: "M. Gentilesche, excellent peintre Florentin, adjouste sur la palette une goutte seulement de vernix d'ambre venant de Venice, don't on vernit les lutes." Gentilesche, was later invited to the court of Charles I and died in England (Charles I: 1600-1649).

     At this point, I should emphasize that varnishing either a painting or a violin, meant applying the last protective coat. The words "amber, varnish, vernice, and bernice," are a real labyrinth of misconceptions over the course of history.

     Eastlake, volume one, page 230 gives a complete story regarding the development of the word "veronice." Eustathius, a writer of the twelfth century, in his commentary on Homer, states that the Greeks of his day called amber "veronice". In the Lucca MS (eighth century manuscript), the word "veronica" more than once occurs among ingredients of varnishes, and it is remarkable that in the copies of the same recipes in the Mappae Clavicula (twelfth century) the word is spelt, in the genitive, "verenices" and "vernices." This is probably the earliest instance of the use of the Latinized word, nearly in its modern form. Further in Eastlake: "The literal coincidence of this name and its modification with the "veronice" of the middle ages, might almost warrant the supposition that amber, which by the best ancient authorities was considered a mineral (fossil gum), may at an early period have been distinguished by the name of a constellation, the constellation of Berenice's (golden) hair."

     Eastlake, in volume one, page 232, made the following very interesting deductions...