In 2010, Claudia Fritz, a researcher from the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, and the violinmaker Joseph Curtin organized a double-blind study, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, in which 21 professional violinists tried to identify which violins were old (including 2 Stradivarius and a Guarneri 'del Gesu'), which were new, and which they preferred.
Valentino Siani (c.1595–1672) was an Italian violinmaker who worked in Brescia and Florence.