A violin dealer was found dead on a farm with 144 Italian instruments, and his heirs sold the unplayed "Messiah" Stradivari

Antonio Stradivari made a violin in Cremona in 1716 and kept it in his workshop until he died in 1737. Count Cozio di Salabue bought it, probably from one of his sons. In the 1820s Cozio sold it to Luigi Tarisio, a dealer from Piedmont. Tarisio kept it in Italy and boasted of it to friends in Paris. Tarisio died in 1854, and his body was found on a small farm near Fontaneto. In 1855 the Paris maker and dealer Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume went to Fontaneto and bought the six finest violins, including this one, with 24 Stradivaris and 120 other Italian instruments. He paid £3,166 for 246 more found in Tarisio's attic in Milan. Vuillaume's son-in-law, the violinist Delphin Alard, called it the "Messiah," which everyone expects and nobody sees. Vuillaume kept it in a glass case. In the 19th century its neck was lengthened and new pegs, bridge and tailpiece were fitted. The London firm W. E. Hill & Sons later bought it. In 1939 Alfred and Arthur Hill gave it to the Ashmolean Museum, on condition, according to later accounts, that it never be played^†. A dendrochronologist first dated its wood to after Stradivari's death, then retracted. The violin is in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.