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Giuseppe Desiato

*1826 , Napels †1907 , Napels

Naples has been an important center for musical instruments ever since the first violin maker from the Gagliano family. Poverty was a recurring consequence of epidemics or economic hardship, which meant that local musicians often had little money to spend. This was no different at the time of Desiato’s birth. Out of necessity, Neapolitan makers therefore often devoted little time to refining their instruments, unlike their Northern Italian colleagues in the more prosperous cities. Giuseppe Desiato, too, usually built his instruments quickly and without refinement. Instruments from the Neapolitan school are, however, often highly valued for their sound.

Workshop(s)

Napels, ±1847-1907

From this builder

Instrument

violin

Giuseppe Desiato Naples, ± 1900

played by
Alice van Binsbergen

Student of Vincenzo Jorio

Giuseppe Desiato was a student and assistant to Vincenzo Jorio, a violin maker who worked in Naples in the mid-19th century. Jorio’s style was rough but charming and showed influences from Lorenzo Ventapane and Raffaele and Antonio Gagliano. Another of Jorio’s apprentices was Vincenzo Postiglione. This luthier marked the transition from the classical to the modern Neapolitan school, in which influences from non-Neapolitan luthiers can be found.

After his time with Jorio, Desiato worked for several years with Vincenzo Postiglione, who had set up his own business in Naples, before opening his own workshop on Via Speranzella around 1865. There, Desiato worked with at least one assistant: Giovanni Tedesco. For several more years, they built violins based on the designs of the Gagliano family, but soon began modeling them after other makers as well, including non-Neapolitan ones such as Vincenzo Carcassi of Florence and Antonio Stradivari of Cremona.