Born in Mantua in 1787, Sante Coppi was a luthier, antiquarian and dealer who hasn't been much studied until recent times. It was probably through the acquaintance of Giuseppe Dall'Aglio, who ended up becoming a relative of him too (having married his sister) that Coppi began to take an interest in musical instruments. During the first decades of the nineteenth century the two worked side by side for long periods, probably collaborating in making violins as well. However, their respective personalities expressed themselves in a rather different way: spontaneous, naive and often almost rustic Dall'Aglio, the work of Sante Coppi was more attentive but perhaps less personal.
At the beginning of his career this maker used a rather slender pattern, with a typically asymmetrical positioning of the F-holes, which had a tendency to converge downwards in a manner that is also characteristic of Dall'Aglio. In the 1830s and 1840s, on the other hand, Coppi's instruments tended to follow a more robust model; the head with a very deep throat and large rounded eyes has little in common with Dall'Aglio's work. The success that the two met in life was also different: while Dall'Aglio led an unstable and wandering existence, Coppi had a good fortune, managing a well-established shop that also dealt with plucked instruments, and later also traded in paintings.
