Andrea Amati

[6] It is estimated that Amati made some 38 instruments between 1560 and 1574 for the Queen Regent of France Catherine de Medici on behalf of her young son, Charles IX of France; one of these was a gilded bass violin, elaborately painted with royal symbols, called The King.

However, according to Sotheby's: "There is no surviving identifiable precedent for the exquisitely refined instruments that Amati made to the commission of Charles IX of France and Pope Pius V from about 1566 onward.

Technically he may have added a fourth string to a louder, outdoor cousin of the viol that was intended to accompany dance music.

"[9] Sotheby's says "Amati's brilliance raised the status of the violin from a farmhand's entertainment to an embellishment fit for a royal court.

[1] The two other candidates he named were Gasparo da Salò from Brescia and a luthier born in Füssen / Bavaria, now part of present-day Germany.

This violin, now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art , may have been part of a set made for the marriage of Philip II of Spain to Elisabeth of Valois in 1559, which would make it one of the earliest known violins in existence.
Ex- Kurtz violin at the Metropolitan Museum of Arts (ca. 1560).