Portuguese guitar
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The Portuguese guitar is a plucked string instrument with twelve steel strings, strung in six courses of two strings. It is one of the few musical instruments that still uses watch-key or Preston tune
Left: Coimbra guitar; right: Lisboa guitar
Portuguese guitar
Fado, by José Malhoa (1910)
António Chainho and his Portuguese guitar (Lisbon model)
Cittern
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The cittern or cithren is a stringed instrument dating from the Renaissance. Modern scholars debate its exact history, but it is generally accepted that it is descended from the medieval citole. Its f
Portuguese guitar
…the Renaissance period, although initially it was restricted to noblemen in court circles. Later it became popular and references have been found to citterns being played in the theater, in taverns and barbershops in the seventeenth and eighteenth century in particular. In 1582, Friar Phillipe de Caverell…
Cittern exhibited at the Music Museum of Barcelona
Cittern MET DP163302
Sir Joshua Reynolds Portrait of Mrs. Froude
Stringed instruments Musical Instrument Museum, Brussels IMG 3919