Giuseppe Guarneri

Guarneri's career is a great contrast to that of Stradivari, who was stylistically consistent, very careful about craftsmanship and finish, and evolved the design of his instruments in a deliberate way over seven decades.

Initially he was thought to be a man of restless creativity, judging by his constant experimentation with f-holes, arching, thicknesses of the top and back and other design details.

However, what has become clear is that, like other members of his family, he was so commercially overshadowed by his illustrious and business-savvy neighbor, Antonio Stradivari, that he was unable to command prices commensurate with his rival, hence needed to make more instruments and work hastily.

[citation needed] Nonetheless, many of these late violins, in spite of the seeming haste and carelessness of their construction, possess a glorious tone and have been much coveted by soloists.

More recent data shows that business was so bad during the later period of his life that he had to relegate violin-making to the sideline and earn his living as an innkeeper (refuting the "prison" myth).

It has also become known that some of the violins emanating from his shop and bearing his label were actually the work of his German wife, Catarina Guarneri, who apparently returned to Germany after her husband's death in 1744.

Accomplished violinists such as Salvatore Accardo, Sarah Chang, Nikki Chooi, Timothy Chooi, Kyung-wha Chung, Eugene Fodor, Augustin Hadelich, Jascha Heifetz, Yi-Jia Susanne Hou, Joseph Joachim, Leila Josefowicz, Nigel Kennedy, Leonid Kogan, Henning Kraggerud, Fritz Kreisler, Gidon Kremer, Yang Liu, Kerson Leong, Robert McDuffie,[10] Anne Akiko Meyers, Midori, Elmar Oliveira, Ruth Palmer, Itzhak Perlman, Rachel Barton Pine, Maud Powell, Michael Rabin, Aaron Rosand, Charlie Siem, Marie Soldat, Isaac Stern, Henryk Szeryng, Arve Tellefsen, Richard Tognetti, Uto Ughi, Henri Vieuxtemps, Tianwa Yang, Eugène Ysaÿe, Florian Zabach, Zvi Zeitlin, and Pinchas Zukerman, have used Guarneri del Gesù violins at one point in their career or even exclusively.

Virtuoso Niccolò Paganini's favorite violin, Il Cannone Guarnerius of 1743, and the Lord Wilton of 1742, once owned by Yehudi Menuhin, are del Gesù instruments.