Page - 14 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 1

Introduction14 volumes in Vienna, but already notes that these works, though in the past they had been highly esteemed, could now be little recommended for serious use.17 Strada’s works also figure occasionally in dictionaries and bibliographies spe- cializing in other fields, such as Johann Huebner’s Bibliotheca genealogica (Hamburg 1729). Both Strada’s edition of the Settimo Libro of Serlio’s archi- tectural treatise and the edition of his own technical drawings posthumously published by his grandson are included in the Kurzer Unterricht von den vorne- hmsten mathematischen Schriften, a bibliography of mathematical writings in the widest sense included as an appendix to Christian Wolff’s Die Anfangs- gründe aller mathematischen Wissenschaften.18 Strada’s merit as a numismat- ic draughtsman, as shown in the prints in Lambeck’s catalogue, also gained him entries in some of the earliest art-dictionaries, such as the Dictionnaire abrégé de peinture et d’architecture by François-Marie de Marsy, published in Paris in 1746, and in Rudolf Füssli’s better known Allgemeines Künstler-Lexicon of 1763.19 As a consequence of these entries Strada was included in many of the gen- eral biographical dictionaries and historical encyclopaedias published in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.20 The entries are mostly succinct sum- maries of Strada’s bibliography, based on notes taken from library catalogues and the earlier publications cited above. All that was known of Strada was based on the two publications of original material, i.e. the drawings engraved in Lambeck’s catalogue of the Imperial Library and the preface to Strada’s Series Imperatorum in Cyprian’s catalogue of the holdings of the Ducal library at Gotha. Only in the nineteenth century the information offered in such entries 17 Fabricius 1713, p. 123; Fabricius 1716, pp. 536 and 540; Banduri 1719, pp. 10–11 (entry v-vi on Jacopo and his French translator Jean Louveau) and 53–54 (entry on Ottavio Strada). 18 Huebner 1729, p. 398; Wolff 1737, § 107 (p. 70); § 165 (p. 78). 19 Marsy 1746, ii, p. 235; Füssli 1763, s.v. Strada, p. 531, and later editions: ‘Strada, Jacobus <…> machte sich in dem xvi Jahrhundert durch seine Geschicklichkeit in Nachzeichnung anticker Medaillen berühmt <…> wie man solches auss einigen Mustern schliessen kan, welche Lambecius in seiner Beschreibung dieser vortrefflichen Bibliothek [i.e. the Impe- rial Library in Vienna] in Kupferstichen vorstellen lassen <…>’. There is no mention of Vorsterman’s print of the Strada portrait in the annexed list of engraved artists’ portraits: like earlier writers Füssli appears to have been unaware of the identity of its sitter. 20 Moreri 1740, viii, s.v. Strada, p.382 (Strada is not included in earlier editions); Zedler 1744 [1962] 40, s.v. Strada, col. 479–480; Jöcher 1750–51 [1960–1961], iv, s.v. Strada, col. 864; Bi- ographie universelle 1811–1829, s.v. Strada; idem, nouvelle edition, s.a., T. 40, pp. 300–301; Nouvelle Biographie 1865, s.v. Strada, col. 540–541. The article in the Biographie universelle is signed by A-g-s, for Domenico de Angelis, who also signed the article in an Italian ver- sion, Biografia universale 1829, pp. 198–199.