Bartolomeo Cristofori
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Bartolomeo Cristofori di Francesco was an Italian maker of musical instruments famous for inventing the piano.
Photo of a 1726 portrait of Bartolomeo Cristofori. The original was lost in the Second World War.
The 1720 Cristofori piano in the Metropolitan Museum in New York
The 1722 Cristofori piano in the Museo nazionale degli strumenti musicali in Rome
The 1726 Cristofori piano in the Musikinstrumenten-Museum in Leipzig
Spinettone
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The spinettone was a kind of harpsichord invented in the late 17th century by Bartolomeo Cristofori, who was later the inventor of the piano. Other names for this instrument were spinettone da teatro,
Bartolomeo Cristofori
…conjectures that this inventory was prepared by a court musician named Giovanni Fuga, who may have referred to it as his own in a 1716 letter. The spinettone, Italian for "big spinet", was a large, multi-choired spinet (a harpsichord in which the strings are slanted to save space), with disposition 1 × 8…
The Cristofori spinettone in the collections of the Musical Instrument Museum in Leipzig, Germany
Detail of the spinettone illustrated above, showing the separate bridges employed for the iron strings in the top range. The four bridges are as follows: top left, four-foot bridge for lower strings (brass); top right, eight-foot bridge for lower strings (brass); lower left, four-foot bridge for higher strings (iron); lower right, eight-foot bridge for upper strings (iron)