Rare and historically important lute by Mangnus Hellmer, Füs...

Hammer

£64,000

Rare and historically important lute by Mangnus Hellmer, Füssen 1601, currently set up for eleven courses of strings, the body comprising seventeen ivory ribs each divided by fine stringing of ebony, ivory and ebony, paper linings, a small ivory button at the top and bottom, the soundboard of very fine grain in the centre widening towards the edges, ebony half edging, the upper soundboard with cutouts now patched with pine for two earlier fingerboard points indicating an earlier neck probably to accommodate between seven to nine courses, an exceptionally fine rose, the piercing based around an eight-pointed star and interlocking circles, the base of the soundboard with an inset upward-pointing ivory heart, the neck overlaid with ebony, the ebony fingerboard possibly a later replacement, the pegbox with treble rider, the central section of fretted scrollwork, bearing a handwritten label Mangnus Hellmer zur Füessen Anno 1601, overall length 78cm., string length 67.2cm
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** Provenance:
This lute was formerly the property of Sebastian Isepp (1884-1954), renowned picture conservator and chief restorer at the Kunsthistorischesmuseum, Vienna. Today as a painter he is credited as a leader of the Nötscher Kreises School of Austrian Painting. He came to Britain with his wife who was of Jewish descent in 1938 at the instigation of Sir Kenneth Clark. He had formed a collection of some thirty-seven stringed instruments most of which were later dispersed, some passing into the Collection of the musicologist and early stringed instrument player, Robert Spencer, and thence into the museum of the Royal Academy of Music. A guitar by Sellas from the Isepp Collection was sold in these Rooms on 20th September 2013. The remaining instruments passed to his son, the renowned piano accompanist Martin Isepp (1930-2011) and thus by inheritance to the present owner
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** DEFRA ivory certificate number IEQZED1H