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Images from The Rawlins
Gallery
Guitar attributed to Matteo Sellas, Venice, ca. 1640
 
Note: Click on any major structural area of the instrument to see a close-up of that area.
NMM 3385. Guitar attributed to Matteo Sellas, Venice, ca. 1640. Five double courses. Vaulted back and sides of fluted ebony with ivory stringing; back of neck veneered in ivory with inlaid ebony in a complex vine design. Original spruce belly with floral marquetry and a four-tiered rose of parchment, paper, and leather stained red and parti-gilded, surrounded by a geometric inlay of ebony and ivory. Six ivory plaques, three with rural scenes, on the fingerboard and head, five of them later replacements, but typical of the period. Overall length: 962 mm. Similar to the Matteo Sellas guitar, Venice, ca. 1630, in the Brussels Conservatoire collection (550). Exhibited at the Castello Sforzesco, Milan, in the 1950s. Ex coll.: Bisiach, Milan. Witten-Rawlins Collection, 1984.
Rose
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Views of the Peghead
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Details of Plaques on Peghead
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Matteo Sellas, father of the instrument maker Domenico Sellas (b. Venice, ca. 1632), was born in Füssen, ca. 1599-1602, and died in Venice in 1654. The crown ("Alla Corona") inscribed on the peghead was the shop sign used by these two Venetian luthiers. Matteo's family immigrated to Venice in the early seventeenth century. Following his training, Matteo established his own highly prolific workshop in the 1620s, where he eventually employed numerous apprentices, some of whom followed their mentor's example, became prominent makers, and established their own instrument-making workshops.
Details of Plaques on Fingerboard
Note: Click on images above to see larger images of the plaques.
Literature
André P. Larson, "Early Italian Plucked Stringed Instruments at the Shrine to Music Museum," Lute Society of America Newsletter 20, No. 1 (February 1985), p. 8.
André P. Larson, The National Music Museum: A Pictorial Souvenir (Vermillion: National Music Museum, 1988), cover, p. 40, and inside front cover.
ClassicNotes: KDFC 102.1 FM (San Francisco) 11, No. 3, Issue #7 (Spring 1996), cover.
Steve Beckermann, Rusty Freeman, Michael Keller, and Michael J. Olsen, Art of the Guitar: A Luthier's Renaissance, Catalog of Exhibition at the Plains Art Museum, Fargo, North Dakota, February 26-June 7, 2009 (Fargo: Plains Art Museum, 2009), pp. 6 and 15.
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A postcard of the Matteo Sellas guitar is available from the Gift Shop
National Music Museum
The University of South Dakota
414 East Clark Street
Vermillion, SD 57069
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