This is a Viola D’Amore made in Naples in the 1770s. It is made of medium colored wood and is an early combination of a violin and viola, played like a violin. The body has a smaller, rounded top section separated from the fuller rounded bottom portion by shallow C-shaped indentation in the center of each side. A long neck protrudes from the top and ends in a series of tuning pegs and a tight spiral scroll at the top. Just inside of the center indentations in the body are f-holes on each side: elongated, narrow slits in the wood with small round holes to aid resonance. Seven strings are anchored on the black, flat V-shaped tailpiece at the bottom center of the body, are lifted by a light-colored wood bridge in the center, and stretched up the black, long, flat, narrow finger board, which starts about a third of the way from the top of the Viola’s body and extends several inches upward. Here the strings are wound around 14 tuning pegs, two for each string, shaped as semi-circular nobs on short round stems.