Andrea Amati

Who is Andrea Amati?

Andrea Amati was a luthier, from Cremona, Italy. Amati is credited with making the first instruments of the violin family that are in the form we use today. According to the National Music Museum in Vermillion, South Dakota:

It was in the workshop of Andrea Amati in Cremona, Italy, in the middle of the 16th century that the form of the instruments of the violin family as we know them today first crystallized.

Several of his instruments survive to the present day, and some of them can still be played. Many of the surviving instruments were among a consignment of 38 instruments delivered to Charles IX of France in 1564.