Page - 10 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 1

Introduction10 treatise, but he did comment on Strada’s drawings in a letter to his learned colleague Basilius Amerbach the Younger. Occo had admired the richly bound volumes of numismatic drawings that Strada had provided to Duke Albrecht v of Bavaria, and reports the fabulous price of a ducat that Strada was paid for each of these splendid drawings. Though Occo is sceptical about the veracity of many of the drawings, he yet deems it a precious treasure, truly befitting a prince.10 Strada had made the huge folio volumes of numismatic drawings com- mended by Occo for the Emperors Ferdinand i and Maximilian ii—these were preserved in the Imperial library in Vienna—and for Hans Jakob Fugger and Duke Albrecht v of Bavaria: these later ended up as spoils of war in the library of Duke Ernest the Pious of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg at Gotha. In both places they excited the interest of the officials locally responsible, such as the learned statesman Veit Ludwig von Seckendorf. Appointed librarian at Gotha in 1654, when he was hardly twenty years old, he had meanwhile been promoted to Privy Councillor of the Duchy. In a letter to Johann Andreas Bosius of 5 De- cember 1657 he gave a summary description of Strada’s volumes, of which the Duke had given him the first three to study, and added some critical notes on their contents. This letter became publicly known only in 1714, when it was transcribed in its entirety in the catalogue entry for the Strada manuscripts in Ernst Salomon Cyprian’s Catalogus Codicum manuscriptum Bibliothecae Go- thanae, together with a full transcription of Strada’s preface annexed to one of the Gotha volumes.11 The related volumes of Strada’s numismatic drawings preserved in the Im- perial Library in Vienna were of easier access than those in Gotha. In his travel diary Charles Patin [Fig. 0.9] relates how he once had been received by Em- peror Leopold i [Fig. 0.7], who had allowed him free access to the Imperial Library where, among its inexhaustible treasures, he had particularly admired 10 Quoted in Patin 1683, pp. 188–189. Occo’s own treatise, Impp. Romanorum nvmismata a Pompeio Magno ad Heraclivm, was printed in Antwerp by Plantin in 1579 (occo 1579). Other references and comments to Strada’s printed numismatic books crop up in sev- eral specialized bibliographies, such as the Bibliotheca nummaria by the Jesuit Philippe Labbé, first published in 1664. However, Labbé created a bibliographical ‘ghost’: a ‘The- saurum antiquitatum, sive imperatorum romanorum orientalium et occidentalium Icones ex antiquis numismatibus delineatae absque aversis illorum partibus, Lugduni anno 1551, in 4o’, of which no copy has ever been found. It seems likely that he either quoted from a copyright privilege or from the title page of a lost manuscript (Labbe 1675). 11 Cyprian 1714, cat. nrs. 239–263, pp. 83–87; he also included verbatim a passage describing these volumes in Burckhard Struve’s Introductio ad notitiam rei litterariae et usum biblio- thecarum [Struve 1704, pp. 13–14], and gives the title of a ms. by Ottavio Strada [Cyprian 1714, cat. nr 178, p. 75].