Pasquale Ventapane

Overview

Pasquale Ventapane is recorded as a violin maker working in Naples in the middle of the nineteenth century, with an active period usually given as roughly 1840 to 1870. He belongs to the later Neapolitan school, the tradition established in the city by the Gagliano family and their contemporaries. Instruments bearing his label circulate in considerable numbers, which is why the name is familiar to players and dealers well beyond the small amount that is documented about his life.

Life and work

Very little is firmly documented about Ventapane. Reference works give an active period rather than birth and death dates, and the surviving record consists mainly of the instruments themselves. Makers of the same surname, among them Lorenzo and Vincenzo Ventapane, are also recorded in Naples, and the relationship between them belongs to specialist literature rather than to a short web page. What can be said is that he worked in the city during its main period of nineteenth-century production, when Naples was the centre of violin making in southern Italy.

Workshop and location

Naples, Italy. Mid-nineteenth-century Neapolitan shops typically combined new making with repair and dealt in instruments of several grades, so the output was usually a workshop effort rather than the work of one pair of hands.

School and style

Neapolitan school, in the line of the Gagliano family. Work of this period and place is generally described as sturdy and practical, with generous proportions and a local approach to the scroll and soundholes, and is valued more for tone and reliability than for the refinement associated with Cremonese output. Ventapane's instruments sit within that idiom.

Labels and brands

Labels in Latinised form are usual, and instruments carrying the name are common enough that the label by itself proves nothing: nineteenth-century Neapolitan violins were frequently relabelled, and the name was also used on later trade instruments. Label, model, workmanship and wood all have to be read together.

Instruments in the market

A public archive listing records five instruments associated with him, all in Naples: violins dated 1796, 1830 and about 1830-40, one violin without a date, and a cello dated 1842. The spread of dates shows how cautiously an undated instrument has to be treated. We do not reproduce archive photographs here.

Authentication notes

Check the outline and arching against documented Neapolitan work of the period, the quality of the wood, the varnish, and whether the label is consistent with the instrument rather than simply present. Because the name is heavily used, a certificate from a recognised authority matters more here than for many makers in a similar price range. This page is reference material, not an authentication.