One day around 1800, an already notorious teen-age violinist arrived in Leghorn to play a concertwith no violin. His name was Nicolo Paganini, and he had pawned his fiddle to pay off a pressing gambling debt. A wealthy merchant offered to lend him a matchless Guarneri del Gesu and, when the performance was over, refused to take it back. "The Guarneri is yours," he cried. "My hands shall never profane the violin which you have touched!"
Paganini treasured the instrument for the rest of his life. He took it home to Genoa, where he devised some of the fantastic technical trickssuch...
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