This guitar, known as a chitarra battente or “strumming guitar,” is elaborately decorated with inlay of mother-of-pearl, bone, and tortoise shell backed with gold leaf to highlight the translucency of this material.  The maker, or luthier, signed his name, C. Mosca Cavelli, across the headstock.  With the assistance of medical professionals, conservators discovered his signature and all but the last number of the year he created this guitar (172x) on a label inside using an endoscope in 2016.