Page - 20 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 1

Introduction20 The publication of material from the Bavarian and Austrian archives reflect- ed a growing interest in detailed factual cultural history based on source ma- terial, and provided incentives and materials to its practitioners. For Munich the principal student was the librarian and intellectual historian Otto Hartig, whose Gründung der Münchener Hofbibliothek durch Albrecht v. und Johann Jakob Fugger, published in the middle of the First World War, is perhaps the best history of any library ever written. Here for the first time some attention was paid to Strada’s role in the creation of the Munich Hofbibliothek and the contiguous Antiquarium, and some hints were given of his close and fruitful relationship with his first known patron, Hans Jakob Fugger, many of whose in- tellectual preoccupations seem to have been shared by his protegé. In his post- humously published survey of Hans Jakob Fugger’s life and career, Wilhelm Maasen, a young historian and sad casualty of the First World War, evoked the intellectual circle where these ideas first came to fruition.35 In Hartig’s later studies of the Kunsttätigkeit at the Bavarian court he not only published new archival data on Strada, but also illustrated and discussed Strada’s architectural designs for the Munich Antiquarium.36 ‘Schwer fassbare, universelle Persönlichkeit von grosser Vielseitigkeit und Wandelbarkeit, die Wohnsitz, Wirkungsstätte und Tätigkeit häufig wechselte’. Thus Fritz Schulz characterizes Strada in the succinct but basically sound sum- mary of the evidence available at the time in his entry on Strada in volume 32 of Thieme-Beckers Allgemeines Künstler Lexikon, which came out in 1938. Though he probably errs in Strada’s date of birth, and unnecessarily speculates about Strada’s origin, his is perhaps the only attempt before the Second World War to present a balanced and complete view of Strada’s career.37 It is no coin- cidence that it is found in an art-historical work of reference: though not really an artist, though not really an artistic patron, though intensively con- cerned in many cultural and intellectual pursuits other than the purely ar- tistic, there can be no doubt that the visual arts remain Strada’s central concern. It is therefore not surprising that modern discussions of Strada’s ac- tivities can be found—with very few exceptions—in the pages of art-historical publications. 35 Hartig 1917(a), pp. 44–46; 50–53, 214–215; Maasen 1922. 36 Hartig 1931, pp. 342, 346, 348, 353; Hartig 1933 (a), Par. 9: ‘die Erwerbung von Antiken’ (pp. 211–219 ) und 10. ‘Das Antiquarium und die Bibliothek’ (pp. 220–225). 37 Schulz 1938. The supposed Netherlandish origin of the Strada family, based on the simi- larity of its name with that of the Flemish engraver Jan van der Straeten (Stradanus), is without any foundation (for Strada’s origins, see below, Ch. 1.1).