French(?) cither viol, finial in the form of a woman in Renaissance-style costume, maple, pine, about 1830.

'A heavy construction with figure-of-eight outline with a curved point at each shoulder. Low-arched pine belly with gilt borders and no purflings, two small sound-holes painted like lyres and crossed by gilt wires imitating lyre strings. Flat back of bird's-eye maple. Belly and back overhang the sides. Wooden side linings. The thick neck has a thick, flat head with a carved female figure with high-piled hair and deep decolletage. Eleven vertical steel wrest pins in the head for the same number of wire playing strings, nine of which are steel, two brass. The ivory nut (width 5.2) reaches over the bass side of the neck to lead two or thee of the strings clear of the fingerboard. Above the nut, located in shallow grooves in the face of the head, are three hitchpins for the attachment of wire sympathetic strings, which number seven. These pass under the fingerboard, and through holes in the bridge to an attachment on the underside of the tailpiece, where they are tuned by threaded hooks and milled wheels. On the face of the tailpiece are three star-shaped studs of mother-of-pearl.'
Anthony Baines: Catalogue of Musical Instruments in the Victoria and Albert Museum - Part II: Non-keyboard instruments. (London, 1998), pp. 13 - 14.

This instrument formed part of the collections of Carl Engel (1818-1882), and was bought for £6 by this Museum in 1882.

Anthony Baines thinks this instrument could be French. He states: 'The grooves in the nut and bridge, though some have been relocated, point to a stringing in the manner of the late 18th century French citterns, with four double courses of wire and three single, though the string length is considerably less'. - Antony Baines: Catalogue of Musical Instruments in the Victoria and Albert Museum - Part II: Non-keyboard instruments. (London, 1998), p.14.

The cither-viol was a wire-strung instrument played with a bow. Like the viola d'amore, this instrument is fitted with 'sympathetic' strings that vibrate when the main strings are played. This example has metal tuning pins (or wrest pins) like those on a harpsichord, instead of tuning-pegs. The pegbox is decorated with a carved female figure with a Renaissance-style hairstyle and dress. The choice of subject may have been inspired by a similar finial on a cittern by Girolamo di Virchi of Brescia, dated 1574 (in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna).

154-1882