A Franco-Flemish double-manual harpsichord,

originally a transposing harpsichord made in Antwerp, c.1620 and

ravalé in Paris in 1750 and then refait by Jacques Barberini, Paris, c.1775

 

Details about the Franco-Flemish harpsichord

 

          This photograph gives a good idea of the splendour of this harpsichord.  The inside and the outside of the case are decorated on a ground of thick gold leaf with oil paintings on top, a process known in the eighteenth century as ‘vernis martin’.  The top surface of the lid incorporates a number of groups of figures, mostly of partly-draped female figures in the style of François Boucher (see Ms O'Murphy on the lid).  The outside of the case and the inside of the lid have been varnished with a thick layer of varnish (probably in a period at the end of the nineteenth century) that has now gone brown and has cracked.  Once cleaned and restored the affected parts should look particularly brilliant and beautiful.

          The soundboard is painted with an eighteenth-century style of flower painting vaguely in the style of Ruckers in an attempt to imitate the real thing.  Both the present flower painting and the blue border scallop and arabesque painting are in the same hand on the old Flemish part of the soundboard as on the later ravalement part of the soundboard making it clear that all of the original Flemish soundboard painting has disappeared.

          The stand is particularly fine and beautifully carved and gilded.  The height of the stand is greater than normal and raises the instrument into a high playing position.

          The case of the instrument has been widened on both sides and the bridges have also been lengthened during the process of ravalement.  There is some evidence from the registers and from the jack markings that the ravalement may have taken place in at least two stages.  In the first stage the instrument may have been widened only on the treble side, probably in 1750, and then at some date after 1775 the bass side was also widened.  The keyboards have the usual F₁ to f³ five-octave compass typical of late eighteenth-century French harpsichords ‘mis a grand ravalement’.  There are now three rows of jacks, although there were originally four, probably with a rear row of jacks in peau de buffle.  This would probably have been used in conjunction with a pedal or knee-lever (genouillère) to produce a ‘swell’ effect in an attempt to simulate the ‘piano’ and ‘forte’ effects of the fortepiano with which the harpsichord was having increasingly to compete.  The strings scalings are normal for an eighteenth-century French harpsichord and would be suitable for tuning to a pitch of about a¹= 405 to 415 Hz.

          The ravalement namebatten which probably originally carried the name of the eighteenth-century maker who carried out the ravalement has disappeared.  The instrument is known to have had a pedal mechanism in the 1950’s but this was removed in this period by an Austrian antique dealer in Buenos Aires.  This pedal mechanism may have been a replacement of an eighteenth-century genouillère or knee-lever system for changing the registration.  The rear row of jacks, probably fitted with peau de buffle plectra, the wrestplank, nuts, tuning pins and the baseboard all disappeared a the time of the 1971 restoration in Rio di Janeiro.

 

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