started to become the center of the violin maker's trade. Although the Brescian masters did not survive the plague, their prolific and accomplished output of instruments certainly did, as a letter from Fulgencio Micanzio to Galileo Galilei dated 1636 makes clear: "the instruments from Brescia are easy to buy..." and another document states "because you can find [them] on every corner...". Many Brescian stringed instruments are listed in inventories of musical instrument makers or instrument dealers in Europe, such as the list published by Francoise Lesure in 1954, wherein the following catalogue of instruments is recorded: 63 lutes from Padua, 17 from Venice, 24 violins from Brescia, 15 lots of strings of Firenze, 21 of Siena. It is also notable that the word "violino" appears in Brescian archival documents at least as early as 1530 and not in Cremona until some fifty years later. Quite a few of the Brescian violins were wonderfully decorated and many were superbly finished, while others retain some rough features of finishing, yet almost all of the authenticated surviving examples by da Salò, his workshop, or of his school or pupils, are noted for their beauty of tone and powerful projection. Gasparo da Salò himself built many violins that conform to the measurements of the modern violin, in an era when the precise measurements of the violin family of instruments were not yet standardized, as well as a small number of models built on a smaller pattern (probably "alla francese"). In addition to violins, he built violas of different sizes from small (39 cm = 15.4") to very large (44.5 cm = 17.5"), both alto and tenor, sometimes with only two corners, as well as cellos, violones, and probably lyres and lironi. In surviving documents, Gasparo da Salò is referred to as “maestro di violini" (violin master) as early as 1568. This title was given to violin makers and was clearly distinct in contemporary documents from the title of "sonadore de violini" (violin player). The title of maestro di violini appears to have been in use from at least 1558 in Brescia and is first attributed to the master luthiers Guglielmo Frigiadi and Francesco Inverardi years prior to the arrival of Gasparo da Salò who at that time still lived in Salò. We know comparatively little of da Salò's chief rival for the distinction of having created the first modern violin, Andrea Amati, lacking as