Silvio de Lellis, recorded as Sylvio de Lellis in Canadian sources (born in 1923 in Rome, Italy - died in 1998 in Rome) was an Italian

luthier A luthier ( ; AmE also ) is a craftsperson who builds or repairs string instruments that have a neck and a sound box. The word "luthier" is originally French and comes from the French word for lute. The term was originally used for makers o ...

. He was the second son of Baron de Lellis, a descendant of the family which gave birth to St

Camillus de Lellis Camillus de Lellis, M.I., (25 May 1550 – 14 July 1614) was a Roman Catholic priest from Italy who founded the Camillians, a religious order dedicated to the care of the sick. He was beatified by Pope Benedict XIV in the year 1742, and ...

, in the 16th century. Silvio de Lellis apprenticed as a violin maker and was destined to take over a piano factory belonging to the family in Czechoslovakia, which the

Communist Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...

take-over prevented. He had to practice his craft for a living afterwards. In 1949 he took first prize at the ''Concorso Internazionale di Liuteria'' in Cremona. He was invited in Canada to set up a guitar manufacture in the 1970s, but it seems the project was poorly conceived and he remained stranded in Montreal, Quebec, with almost no money left. He was associated with Frank Ravenda as a violin maker, Ravenda being a music instruments salesman. In 1975, de Lellis moved to Quebec City, where a good

was needed, and after getting a teaching job at the conservatory through the efforts of his apprentice, he finally opened a school of lutherie in that city. De Lellis left Quebec City for Rome in 1979, where he resumed his practice as a luthier. He had his last workshop in Tivoli, some 50 km from Rome, and became widely recognised as a teacher.Riccardo Malavasi, Liutaio a Cremona
"Tirocinio nella bottega del liutaio Riccardo Bergonzi. Ha frequentato dal 1989 al 1991 la scuola di liuteria a Roma sovvenzionata dalla regione Lazio e la comunità europea sotto l’insegnamento del maestro liutaio Silvio de Lellis." De Lellis died in 1998 of a heart attack.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:De Lellis, Silvio 1923 births Businesspeople from Rome 1988 deaths Italian luthiers Italian expatriates in Canada