Page - 60 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 1

Chapter �60 a dire necessity, as had been Michelangelo’s case. But it is not certain that the status of a liberal art accorded to painting and sculpture in the most advanced intellectual circles of Florence and Rome was immediately shared by a large proportion of the population of more provincial centres.34 Since Strada’s fam- ily appears to have been quite well-to-do, it is possible that the young Jacopo was allowed to haunt Giulio’s studio and the ducal cantiere, picking up what he could, receiving some formal instruction from Giulio or some of his col- laborators, but never actually assisting on an official basis in the execution of their works: his interest and competence in the visual arts thus developed in a dilettante manner similar to that expressly approved of by that Mantuan arbiter elegantiarum, Count Baldassare Castiglione, whose bones rested in the same church as those of Strada’s great-uncle Simone.35 Certainly this is what Strada would have us believe from the mid-1550’s onward: though a professional draughtsman working on a big and lucrative project for Hans Jakob Fugger, Strada was indicated by Giovanni Battista Armenini, whom he employed in this same project in Rome in 1553–1555, as a ‘mercante Mantovano’, a merchant from Mantua, rather than as an artist. And when Strada had entered the service of Emperor Ferdinand i he explic- itly defended himself against an antiquarian rival, who had dismissed him as a mere—and therefore ignorant—goldsmith, by attributing his know-how in that craft solely to his interest also in the physical aspects of ancient coins.36 1.5 Giulio’s Collections The assumption that Strada received his education in the visual arts in Giulio’s milieu is supported by his familiarity with Giulio Romano’s medagliere. This connection is documented in Strada’s eleven-volume numismatic Corpus, manuscript copies of which are preserved in Vienna and Prague, and which is complemented with thousands of pen-and-ink drawings commissioned by 34 Exceptional both because of his extraordinary genius and passionate sense of vocation, Michelangelo is a less apt example than, for instance, the Milanese Giuseppe Arcimboldo, who made much of his noble descent, or Ippolito Andreasi from Mantua, whose tenuous link with one of the cities magnate families did not prevent him from studying and hon- ourably exercising the craft of painting. 35 Santa Maria delle Grazie. See: Castiglione, Il libro del cortegiano, i, xlix. A drawing of Casti- glione’s tomb, designed by Giulio Romano, is found in the Codex Chlumczansky that once made part of Strada’s collection. 36 Armenini 1587, pp. 64–65; Doc. 1559-06-00; discussed below, Ch. 4.2.