Two distinct chordophones have gone by the name of viola d'amore : the earlier was metal strung, with five strings, the later a hybrid form of viola da gamba with sympathetic strings.
The first type, an ordinary violin strung with four metal strings to which a fifth, of gut or wire, was sometimes added, was already played in the latter part of the seventeenth century. But metal-strung violins can hardly have been a novelty even then, for Praetorius had already praised...