Omobono Stradivari

Omobono Stradivari was born on 14 November 1679 to Antonio Stradivari and his first wife Francesca Ferraboschi in Cremona, Italy. Little is known about his early life except that his family was living at a house known as Casa del Pescatore in the Parish of Saint Agata. Just one year after Omobono was born, the family sold the Casa del Pescatore for the respectable sum of 7,000 Imperial Lire, and relocated to the famous home of Antonio Stradivari, Casa Nuziale, which is now No. 1 Piazza Roma, Cremona. When he was 19, his mother died and his father Antonio organized an elaborate funeral, showing that the Stradivaris were already quite prosperous. Antonio quickly remarried, this time to Antonia Zambelli, and had five more children.[1]

While it is probable that Omobono started working in his father's workshop from a young age, as was the practice of the day, there is very little work that can be definitively traced to him. Antonio Stradivari is well known not only for his high productivity, but also for his use of templates and a highly finished product, eliminating all tool marks that could be used to deduct the identity of the workman. Omobono is supposed to have been chiefly occupied with repairing. On works that are attributable to him, he shows clumsy workmanship, except on the scroll,[2] suggesting that if his father employed a division of labour in his workshop, perhaps Omobono was assigned the scrolls. Besides the decay in workmanship, Omobono's instruments show little other departure from the design of his father except that he tended to point the mitres of his purfling outward, away from the Cs.[3]

After his father's death in 1737, Omobono, who was evidently enriched by his inheritance, stopped his production of instruments, and receded into obscurity.

Immediate family of Antonio Stradivari

Giulio Cesare Stradivari Doralice Milani m. 1600 Leonardo Moroni Alessandro Stradivari b. 1602 Anna Moroni m. 1622 Giuseppe Giulio Cesare b. 1623 Carlo Felice b. 1626 Giovanni Battista b. 1628 Antonio Stradivari c. 1644–1737 Francesca Ferraboschi 1640–1698 m. 1667 Antonia Maria Zambelli c. 1664–1737 m. 1699 Giulia Maria c. 1667– Francesco 1670–1670 Francesco 1671–1743 Catterina Annunciata 1674–1748 Alessandro Giuseppe 1677–1732 Omobono Stradivari 1679–1742 Francesca Maria 1700–1720 Giovanni Battista Giuseppe 1701–1702 Giovanni Battista Martino 1703–1727 Giuseppe Antonio 1704–1781 Paolo 1708–1776