Dulcimer and case, made in Italy, ca. 1750

"Trapeze-shaped body heavily built with the back of a wood possibly cypress. The soundhole is in the back, and the body has scrolled feet. The hitch rail, on the left side, is carved with a deep channel, the inner edge of which forms a rail for eleven courses of strings attached to hitch pins immediately below the edge. The other fourteen courses are hitched to the outer edge of the channel. ... The wooden case, not originally for this dulcimer, is decorated with a scene of Orpheus and the Muses surrounded by Baroque scrollwork of late seventeenth century character. On the outside is a painted diapper patytern with sprigs, in blue and white. The case is probably Italian". (Baines, Anthony. Catalogue of Musical Imstruments in the Victoria & Albert Museum. Part II: Non-keyboard instruments. London, 1998, p. 73.)

This object was bought with its case from Signor Castellani (presumably of Alessandro Castellani, the great jeweller and collector of Rome) for £20 in 1869. It is thought that the case is not original to the instrument.

Italian Dulcimers like this example were frequently trapeze-shaped, and most often played in Spain and Italy with quills fitted to leather thimble-like rings placed on finger tips. They usually accompanied string instruments. Although its case may originally have come from another instrument, it is decorated with Apollo and the Muses, a popular theme on harpsichords and other keyboard instruments. Modern-day dulcimers differ in that they are nor as ornate as this example and can have an undulating shape.

4:1&2-1869