The baroque cello deserves some more attention : which kind of instrument is it really? Recent musicological research shows us that this instrument exists in a variety of formats, from the small enough to be played on your arm, to the large “church bass”, also known as “basse de violon” in France and tuned to Bb in the orchestra of Lully, or even in Eb as a “basse de Lorraine”. In addition to this variety of formats, the number of strings, by no means restricted to the four of the classic type, includes the typologies with five and six strings. These are cited by the authoritative sources by Matheson, Walther and Brossard, finding their counterpart in iconographic evidence.