This exquisite virginal (rectangular harpsichord), hardly more than a foot long, was presumably made for a child of the nobility or aristocracy. Fully functional despite its small size, it might have been used for his or her first music lessons, if not as an extravagant toy. This instrument, together with a nearly identical miniature virginal in the Museo degli Strumenti Musicali in Milan and a nineteenth-century reference suggesting the existence of another virginal, now lost, of unspecified size, dated 1673, are all that is known of Vaninus or his work. He signed the NMM instrument with a handwritten paper label in the interior. Although slightly damaged, the missing letters can be supplied by a later copy of the inscription written in pencil on the bottom board: FRAN[C]IS[CVS VA]NINUS BONONIENSIS FACIEBAT AÑO DÑI. M.DC.LXXII.
