The words might apply to the perfected violin, whose evolution was going on all through that period of literary and artistic activity known as the Renaissance.  When or at whose hands it gained its present form is unknown.  The same doubt encircles its first master player.  Perhaps the earliest worthy of mention is one Baltzarini, a Piedmontese, appointed by Catherine de Medici, in 1577, to lead the music at the French court, and said to have started the heroic and historical ballet in France.

He is sometimes confounded with Thomas Baltzar, a violinist of Lubec, who, in 1656 introduced the practice of shifting in London, where he wholly eclipsed David Mell, a much admired clockmaker fiddler, although the latter, as a contemporary stoutly averred, “played sweeter, was a well-bred gentleman, and was not given to excessive drinking as Baltzar was.”  His marvelous feat of “running his fingers to the end of the finger-board and back again with all alacrity” caused a learned Oxford connoisseur of music to look if he had hoofs.  Notwithstanding the jovial tastes of this German, he was appointed leader, by Charles II., of the famous violins, and had the final honor of a burial in Westminster Abbey.

Here reposed also in due time his successor in the royal band, John Banister, who had been sent by the king to France for study, and who was the first Englishman, unless the amateur Mell be counted, to distinguish himself as a performer on the violin.  He wrote music for Shakespeare’s Tempest, and was the first to attempt, in London, concerts at which the audience paid for seats.  Announcements of the initial performance, September 30, 1672, read:  “These are to give notice that at Mr. Banister’s house (now called the Musick School) over against the George Tavern in White Friars, this present Monday will be performed musick by excellent masters, beginning precisely at four o’clock in the afternoon and every afternoon for the future at precisely the same hour.”

Credit for shaping the first violin has been given Gasparo Bertolotti (1542-1609), called Gasparo da Salo, from his birthplace, a suburb of Brescia, that pearl of Lombardy so long a bone of contention among nations.  Violins were doubtless made before his time, but none are known to-day dated earlier than his.  A pretty legend tells how this skilful viol-maker imprisoned in his first violin the golden tones of the soprano voice of Marietta, the maiden he loved and from whom death parted him.  Her likeness, so the story runs, is preserved in the angel face, by Benevenuto Cellini, adorning the head.  The instrument thus famed was purchased for 3,000 Neapolitan ducats by Cardinal Aldobrandini, who presented it to the treasury at Innsprueck.  Here it remained as a curiosity until the French took the city in 1809, when it was carried to Vienna and sold to a wealthy Bohemian collector, after whose death it came into the possession of Ole Bull.