The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Bulletin

Jose Massague
Spanish, I 690-1764
Guitar
Spanish (Barcelona), about 1750
Pine, maple, and various other materials
Length, 375/,6 in. (94.8 cm)
Purchase, Clara Mertens Bequest, in memory of
Andre Mertens, I990
1990.zZ0
The acquisition of a handsome example of the work of Jose
Massague is timely in view of our exhibition of Spanish
guitars, to be presented this fall, in cooperation with
the Sociedad Estatal para la Ejecuci6n de Programas del
Quinto Centenario. Massague (also known as Massaguer)
flourished in Barcelona, where he died in 1764; his shop in the
calle de Escudillers was close to that of the violin maker Juan
Bautista Guillami. A member of the local carpenters' guild,
Massague made violins that resemble Guillamfi's, as well as
guitars, but few of the latter survive. Indeed, eighteenth-century
Spanish instruments of all kinds are scarce and not well represented
in our collection.
This deep, broad-waisted guitar bears five pairs of strings, as
was normal before the nineteenth century. Gut frets encircle
the neck; the four highest frets, of wood, are glued to the
fine-grained pine top. The geometric sound-hole rosette is a
modern replacement. A ring of zigzag purfling surrounding the
sound hole contrasts with a bold, wavy inlay along the fingerboard
and tuning head (a very similar wavy inlay exists on a
guitar by the maker Cassas of Bana, Le6n Province, now in the
Musee Instrumental, Brussels). Foliate ornaments flanking
the bridge echo the forms of dark wood inlays near the tail
and end of the fingerboard. The two-piece back and sides are
of figured maple. A Massague guitar preserved at the Staatliches
Institut fur Musikforschung Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin,
is a more slender model and lacks the inlaid decoration of
our guitar, which is identified by Massague's stamp on the
back of the head.
LL
Bibliography: Jose L. Romanillos, Exposicion de guitarras antiguas
espanolas (exhib. cat.), Alicante, I985, pp. 7-8, i6, 35.
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