Page - 9 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 1

9The Image—Or from Whom (Not?) to Buy a Second-Hand Car 0.4 What is Known About Strada: Early Notices When setting out on my research into the man behind the portrait, forty years ago, I soon found out that the Titian portrait is indeed Strada’s major claim to fame. His existence apart from it received little attention before the second half of the twentieth century; and if so, it was mostly in the form of brief no- tices throwing light on a specific aspect of his various activities. Yet, though the portrait was accessible through Vorsterman’s engraving, the very earliest references on Strada rarely—if ever—refer to it.8 These entries were written by antiquarian scholars who used Strada’s books, or by archivists and librarians who in their collection stumbled upon a manuscript by or a document relating to Strada that happened to interest them. 0.4.1 Numismatics Strada’s numismatic work was his principal contribution to the Republic of Letters, and it is mostly as a numismatist that he is referred to in the learned products of the Republic of Letters of the seventeenth and early eighteenth century. The earliest mentions are mostly bibliographical references to his printed books included in numismatic treatises, such as Antoine Le Pois’ Dis- cours sur les medalles et graveures antiques and a new, much expanded edition of Conrad Gesner’s universal bibliography edited by two Zürich scholars, Josias Simler and Johannes Jacobus Frisius.9 Adolf Occo, another and better known numismatist of these years, does not refer to Strada’s printed books in his own 8 This is less surprising than it seems: though Vorsterman’s plate shows the cartouche, it does not render the inscription, and he omits to identify the sitter otherwise. 9 Le Pois 1579 fols. 2–3; on Le Pois’ judgment of Strada and other contemporary numismatists, see Cooper 1990, pp. 14–15; Frisius 1583, p. 386 prepared his descriptions on the basis of copies in the Imperial library in Vienna, and included all the books published by Strada except his Frankfurt 1575 edition of Caesar’s Commentaries. He added the curious but probably mis- taken contention that Strada would have written “Scholia in Pontani librum De Immanitate”. If Frisius got his information directly from Strada himself, as is perfectly possible, there must be some foundation to his contention, which is repeated once or twice in later reference works (Johann Albert Fabricius’ Bibliographia antiquaria and Jöcher’s Gelehrtenlexikon; cf. below). But I have not been able to find any publication or other reference corroborating this. Though it cannot be excluded that Strada, specializing in Roman imperial biographies, would have used and commented on Pontanus, I rather suspect that a note on Jacob Spiegel may have strayed among Frisius’ filing-cards on Strada. In Jöcher’s Gelehrtenlexikon, in which the entry on Strada repeats Frisius’ contention (Jöcher 1750–1751, iv, col. 864; see below), Spiegel’s cited publications include: “Scholia in Rich. Bartolini Austriados, s. De bello Norico libros xii, die auch unter Just. Reuberi scriptoribus; notae in Jo. Jov. Pontani De immunitate [sic]”. The book in question is Giovanni Gioviano Pontano, De Immanitate Liber Unus, Cum Scholiis Iacobi Spiegel (Augsburg 1519) (Jöcher 1750–1751, iv, col. 736).