Mandolin

Neapolitan style bowlback mandolin with seventeen inlaid nickel-silver frets on a tortoiseshell fingerboard. The bowl is extraordinarily decorated wiht a rich design of checkerboard pattern ivory and tortoiseshell separated by nickel-silver strips, and a profuse decoration in ivory inlay depicting a naked woman, putti playing instruments, grotesques, and floral designs. These decorative motifs continue on the fingerboard and peghead of the instrument. The maker's name is inlaid around the oblong soundhole.