Re-reading a two-instrument series through Benedetto’s handwritten production log.
The Benedetto Renaissance Series consists of only two guitars: the 1994 Il Fiorentino #31494 and the 1996 Il Palissandro #37096.
Both are 16-inch non-cutaways with petal-like soundholes. But the Il Fiorentino is nylon-strung, while the Il Palissandro uses steel strings. Their structures and materials are not the same. They sit somewhat awkwardly within the usual idea of a “series.”
When I previously introduced the Il Fiorentino on this site, I too regarded the Renaissance Series as two exceptional one-off instruments. That view changed when I compared Benedetto’s handwritten production log with later typeset sources.
The entry for #31494 reads “Renaissance.” The entry for #37096 says “RENAISSANCE” in capital letters. The names by which the guitars are now known—Il Fiorentino and Il Palissandro—appear in neither handwritten entry.
It is natural to use their individual names to distinguish the two completed guitars. In the workshop record, however, the word Renaissance comes before the individual name. Once this order is recognized, the Renaissance Series begins to look like something more than a label applied afterward to two similar instruments.
The absence of Il Fiorentino and Il Palissandro from the log does not prove that those names were coined later. They may already have been used in conversation, or simply omitted from the entry. Still, the appearance of the same word beside two instruments built nearly two years apart should not be overlooked.
Reading Three Sources in Chronological Order
When considering this series, it is important not to merge sources made at different times. The contemporary workshop record, the typeset production record, and the later description written after both guitars existed use different language.
- 1994 and 1996
Handwritten production log - #31494 is entered as “Renaissance,” and #37096 as “RENAISSANCE.” No individual model name is recorded.
- 1994
Typeset production record - Making an Archtop Guitar identifies #31494 as the “Il Fiorentino model.”
- 2001
Blue Book - The Renaissance Series is described as one-of-a-kind archtops characterized by clustered soundholes, and the Il Fiorentino and Il Palissandro are named as its two instruments.
The Blue Book of Acoustic Guitars is useful for understanding the series as it later came to be defined. Its description, however, cannot simply be treated as proof of the original intention. The earliest clue remains the contemporary production log.
Nor should the handwritten entry be treated as uniquely authoritative. The log served the workshop; Making an Archtop Guitar and the Blue Book organized information for readers. Different purposes produce different descriptions of the same instrument. Read together, the three sources suggest that a workshop designation was later organized into individual names and a series name.
About one year and nine months separated the completion of the Il Fiorentino and the Il Palissandro. They were not sibling instruments built in immediate succession. Even so, Benedetto placed the same word beside both. Renaissance may have functioned as a conceptual grouping preceding the individual model names, rather than as the name of a shared specification.
This is the reverse of an ordinary series, in which a common design exists first and is expanded through variants. The two completed guitars differ substantially, yet the workshop record places them in the same conceptual location. That discrepancy is what makes the Renaissance Series so interesting.
Il Fiorentino—An Answer to Nylon Strings
The first instrument, the 1994 Il Fiorentino, is a 16-inch non-cutaway archtop built for nylon strings. It has a slotted headstock, an approximately two-inch nut width, and an asymmetrically shaped end to the fingerboard. Petal-like openings occupy the upper bout in place of conventional f-holes.
Seen from the front, elements of a classical guitar appear within an archtop outline. Yet the instrument does not fully submit to either form. It retains the tailpiece and overall form of an archtop, while the headstock, fingerboard, string spacing, and openings are reconfigured around nylon strings.
Fiorentino means “Florentine” in Italian, or a person from Florence. The connection with the city most closely associated with the Renaissance is striking, but no source has been found establishing it as the reason for the name.
This was not an existing model simply fitted with nylon strings. Inside are slender braces unlike Benedetto’s usual X- or parallel-bracing. The entire instrument was rebalanced to move the top under lower string tension.
The petal-shaped soundholes are more than surface decoration. Sheet reinforcement is applied beneath the complex openings. The design included not merely cutting a different shape in place of f-holes, but also the internal work required to make that shape viable.
The underlying idea was not wholly without precedent. D’Angelico sources record Benedetto’s repair of a custom oval-hole instrument built for nylon strings. That repair cannot be connected directly to the Il Fiorentino, but it shows that Benedetto had encountered a nylon-string archtop before designing his own.
No source bridges the repaired instrument and the Il Fiorentino. Even so, the concept did not appear from nowhere in 1994. The guitar can be read as one answer from a builder who had handled an earlier example and asked how he would approach the problem himself.
The design also has practical peculiarities. The gearless tuners on the slotted headstock suit the appearance, but in their current condition make stable tuning difficult. Years later, when I asked whether the same tuners could be used on my 16 Custom, Benedetto replied that they could not be used with steel strings. They were not a visual element that could simply be transferred to a regular model.
Documentation, specification sheets, measurements, and interior photographs are collected in “1994 Benedetto Il Fiorentino #31494 | Instrument Record” (Japanese).
Il Palissandro—Rearranging a Classical Form
The 1996 Il Palissandro #37096 takes a different direction despite sharing the 16-inch non-cutaway format. It has steel strings, rosewood back and sides, a mahogany neck, and a petal-like soundhole at the center of the top.
Palissandro is Italian for rosewood, so it is natural to assume that the name refers directly to the material. Yet this name too is absent from the handwritten production log, where the only entry is “RENAISSANCE.”
Rosewood back and sides paired with a mahogany neck are familiar in classical and flat-top guitars. A 16-inch non-cutaway is not outside the history of the archtop either, and the central decorative opening has a distant precedent in the rose of early guitars.
The opening is not simply the Il Fiorentino motif moved unchanged. On the Il Fiorentino the openings occupy the upper bout; on the Il Palissandro one is placed at the center of the top. The shared visual idea was adapted in form and position to each instrument, consistent with the later Blue Book description of the series.
Within Benedetto’s work, normally based on maple backs and sides, the Il Palissandro’s materials remain unusual. It did not introduce unknown materials; it brought an established combination from another kind of guitar into Benedetto’s own archtop. Where the Il Fiorentino altered strings and structure, the Il Palissandro retained a classical vessel while rearranging what was inside it.
Rosewood alone could be dismissed as a special-order detail. Combined with the 16-inch non-cutaway body, mahogany neck, and central opening, it places the instrument at a considerable distance from a conventional Benedetto. Because its structural difference is less immediately visible than the Il Fiorentino’s, the experimental character of the Il Palissandro may be easier to overlook.
Il Fiorentino
Nylon strings / wide neck / dedicated internal structure
The archtop was adapted to a different level of string tension.
Il Palissandro
Steel strings / rosewood / mahogany neck
A classical form was reinterpreted through different materials and design.
Two Directions That Remained in Later Benedetto Work
My own records provide one reason not to regard the Il Palissandro as an isolated special build.
While discussing a 16-inch non-cutaway commission with Benedetto from 2003 to 2006, he told me that this was the kind of guitar he himself wanted to build. His first proposal paired rosewood back and sides with a mahogany neck. Among several suggested soundhole designs were options reminiscent of the Il Palissandro.
My completed 16 Custom took a different form, but at the initial concept stage the materials and design explored in the Il Palissandro remained available possibilities.
The Sinfonietta, introduced during the Savannah period, uses a 16-inch, three-inch-deep, 25-inch-scale non-cutaway as its basic form, with materials, soundholes, and bracing selected individually. It is not identical to the Il Palissandro. But the idea of using the classical 16-inch non-cutaway as a platform for exploring a different sound in each instrument became a formal model.
The 2023 Centennial Sinfonietta commemorated the 16-inch Gibson L-5 first listed in 1923. It demonstrates that for Benedetto this size and form were not a simplified small model, but a vessel through which to return to the source of the archtop.
The line explored by the Il Fiorentino did not disappear either. The Savannah workshop produced nylon-string #S2367 by Stephanie Ward, and Neil Lamb’s seven-string nylon model “Jamenco” is documented. The 2023 Vinodetto XI was a nylon-string Sinfonietta. None can be declared a direct successor to the Il Fiorentino, but they confirm that nylon-string archtops continued to be considered in the workshop.
The Renaissance Designation
The two guitars do share elements: 16-inch non-cutaway bodies, openings that depart from conventional f-holes, and Italian individual names. Those points alone, however, do not fully explain two instruments with different strings, structures, and materials as one product family.
If the word Renaissance in the handwritten log is taken as the starting point, the designation preceded any completed common specification.
By the middle of the 1990s, Benedetto’s archtops already possessed a settled design language. In the Il Fiorentino he revised the structure for nylon strings; in the Il Palissandro he introduced different materials and an unconventional opening into the classical 16-inch form. Their means differed, but both reopened his established formula.
I therefore understand the Renaissance Series not as a group of models with fixed specifications, but as a workshop category applied to these two explorations. This is not an established definition left by Benedetto himself. It is an interpretation based on the production log, the instruments, later works, and my own correspondence with him.
The starting fact is clear: two very different guitars carried the same word, Renaissance, in their production records. To describe the series only as two rare one-offs is therefore insufficient. It preserves a record of Benedetto reconsidering his mature style from two different directions.
Sources
- Robert Benedetto, Making an Archtop Guitar
Limelite Press edition, 1994; Hal Leonard edition, 2018. Consulted for the description of #31494 as the “Il Fiorentino model.” - Robert Benedetto handwritten production log
Entries for #31494 and #37096, from images in the author’s collection. Consulted for “Renaissance” and “RENAISSANCE.” - Frank W. M. Green, D’Angelico, Master Guitar Builder: What’s in a Name?
Centerstream Publications, 2008, pp. 52–54. Consulted for the account of Benedetto repairing a nylon-string D’Angelico. - Blue Book of Acoustic Guitars, 7th Edition
Blue Book Publications, 2001, p. 110. Consulted for its description of the Renaissance Series and the two instruments. - Correspondence with Benedetto, specification proposals, and soundhole designs
2003–2006, author’s collection. Consulted for proposals involving a 16-inch non-cutaway and alternative materials. - Benedetto Guitars Archives
Il Fiorentino, nylon string #S2367, and Neil Lamb with Jamenco. - Official Benedetto Guitars pages
Vinodetto XI, Sinfonietta, and Centennial Sinfonietta. - Treccani
Definitions of fiorentino and palissandro. - The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Guitar, attributed to Matteo Sellas, consulted regarding decorative roses in early guitars.