The Duport Stradivarius is a cello

Cello

The cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...

 made in 1711 by Italian luthier

Luthier

A luthier is someone who makes or repairs lutes and other string instruments. In the United States, the term is used interchangeably with a term for the specialty of each maker, such as violinmaker, guitar maker, lute maker, etc...

 Antonio Stradivari

Antonio Stradivari

Antonio Stradivari was an Italian luthier and a crafter of string instruments such as violins, cellos, guitars, violas, and harps. Stradivari is generally considered the most significant artisan in this field. The Latinized form of his surname, Stradivarius, as well as the colloquial, "Strad", is...

 of Cremona

Cremona

Cremona is a city and comune in northern Italy, situated in Lombardy, on the left bank of the Po River in the middle of the Pianura Padana . It is the capital of the province of Cremona and the seat of the local City and Province governments...

. The instrument is named after Jean-Louis Duport

Jean-Louis Duport

Jean-Louis Duport , sometimes known as Duport the Younger to distinguish him from his older brother Jean-Pierre , was a cellist....

, who played it around 1800. In 1812, Duport permitted Napoleon Bonaparte to handle it; a dent, still visible on the instrument, is said to have resulted from the emperor's rough handling while straddling the cello with his boots. Auguste-Joseph Franchomme set a price record by purchasing it for FRF

French franc

The franc was a currency of France. Along with the Spanish peseta, it was also a de facto currency used in Andorra . Between 1360 and 1641, it was the name of coins worth 1 livre tournois and it remained in common parlance as a term for this amount of money...

25,000 in 1843 from Duport's son. The instrument maker Jean Baptiste Vuillaume

Jean Baptiste Vuillaume

Jean Baptiste Vuillaume was an illustrious French violin maker. He made over 3,000 instruments and was also a fine businessman and an inventor.-Early life:...

 used the Duport as the primary model for his cellos. The Duport is one of the most valuable extant Stradivari cellos. It was owned and played from 1974 to 2007 by Mstislav Rostropovich

Mstislav Rostropovich

Mstislav Leopoldovich Rostropovich, KBE , known to close friends as Slava, was a Soviet and Russian cellist and conductor. He was married to the soprano Galina Vishnevskaya. He is widely considered to have been the greatest cellist of the second half of the 20th century, and one of the greatest of...

.

The instrument is presently owned by Rostropovich's heirs.