Giuseppe Guarneri's violin (Bartolomeo Giuseppe Antonio Guarneri), known as Baltic, was sold at the Tarisio auction. The lot cost $9.44 million and now this violin is one of the most expensive musical instruments in the world. The violin was kept for a long time by the collector and businessman Sau-Wing Lam, who supported young musicians all his life. Sau-Vin Lam was a judge at prestigious music competitions and played the cello. After his death, the instrument ended up in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where in 1994 it appeared at an exhibition with other Guarneri violins.
The Baltic violin was made in 1731 and is one of the 150 handmade works of the master. In the 1950s, it was played by Dorotha Powers Percival along with two Stradivari violins. Equally valuable among Guarneri's other masterpieces is the Kreisler violin, made in 1741, played by the Austrian musician Fritz Kreisler.
Giuseppe Guarneri comes from a family of famous Italian craftsmen. It is customary to add the phrase "del Gesù" to his name, which means "from Jesus": on his violins, Guarneri left a symbol similar to the emblem of the Jesuit order. The period of his work is divided into three periods (“Baltika” was made in the first period), during which he collected violins, and did not take up cellos, unlike his father and grandfather.
