Page - 40 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 1

Introduction40 This also holds for most of my own earlier publications on Strada, which deal with specific themes: Strada’s relations with his patrons, especially at the Im- perial court, his activities as a collector and dealer in art and antiquities, his antiquarian studies, and his interest in architecture.102 The present book may fill some of the lacunae signalled above, but it is pri- marily an attempt towards an all-round biography of Jacopo Strada. First it will give as complete an overview as possible of the many different activities in which he engaged during his long life. Second, its aim is to analyse each of these activities in their context, or rather contexts: context of place and con- text of time; context of traditions continued, and of innovations introduced by Strada and his contemporaries. Most important, Strada’s activities will be considered not as separate or isolated events, but will be studied in relation to one another. One question will be whether it is possible to reduce the mani- fold and at first sight disparate aspects of Strada’s life and career to something approaching a meaningful and coherent order. Can a consistent pattern be discovered in his activities that would allow us to add them up to something approaching a distinct profession? And if so, was such a profession more than just a private concept present in Strada’s mind, or can it be considered a more or less generally recognized trade, craft or calling? If so, the name of that profession is clearly and proudly indicated on the title pages of all of Strada’s books and presentation manuscripts, and was never omitted from his signature in his letters to his patrons: Antiquario in Italian, Antiquarius in Latin. As we have seen, in English these terms can be translated by ‘antiquarian’, ‘antiquary’, or even ‘archaeologist’. In my text I generally prefer to use the term ‘antiquary’, as being the most neutral and least anachronis- tic.103 A comparative study of other individuals indicated or indicating them- selves with this appellation is no part of this study, but I hope the presentation of the data of Strada’s career in future will help to answer that question by making such a comparison feasible. Considering the certain data on Strada’s life in their mutual interdepen- dence and in their context will allow me to draw some conclusions not war- ranted by the isolated facts alone. The extant documents, which are listed in 102 Cf. bibliography, s.v. Jansen. 103 But I prefer not to be dogmatic about it, in this following Arnaldo Momigliano, who in his ground-breaking article used both ‘antiquary’ and ‘antiquarian’ without explicit distinc- tion (Momigliano 1950). Bernd Kulawik drew my attention to Strada’s use of the indication ‘ΕΚ ΜΟΥΣΕΙΟΥ ΙΑΚΩΒΟΥ ΤΟΥ ΣΤΡΑΔΑΙ ΜΑΝΤΟΑΝΟΥ ΚΑΙΣΑΡΟΝ ΑΡΧΑΙΟΛΟΓΟΥ’ on the (Greek) title page of the first volume of the album depicting and describing (Greek) Roman Provincial Imperial coins in Vienna (önb-hs 9416), and to the significance of this possibly early use of that term.