Page - 61 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 1

6�Early Years his patrons.37 In his descriptions of Roman coin types Strada always indicat- ed the owner of the best exemplar he had been able to study. These included only a few from Castiglione’s collection, to which his heirs had admitted the young Jacopo, but a not inconsiderable number of the medals described he had found in Giulio’s collection.38 Giulio’s expertise as a numismatist and the high quality of his coin cabinet were singled out for particular praise by Vasari, who had admired Giulio’s house and collections during his 1544 visit to Man- tua: ‘Giulio, who was a most universal man, could discourse on every subject; but especially on medals, on which he spent quite a lot of money and much time to know about them’.39 So when Strada claimed to have been ‘a pueri enu- tritum’ in numismatics, he may well have thought less of his contemplation of the Quattrocento fresco’s in his great-uncle’s house as of the hours he had profitably spent in going through Giulio’s medals; medals whose significance was explained to him by their owner, who would have enjoyed the enthusi- asm of his young guest and have helped and directed him in obtaining the ac- complishments necessary to pursue his studies. Correct draughtsmanship was of some importance in this, and the similarity of the technique Strada devel- oped with that current in Giulio’s studio as described by Armenini is therefore hardly surprising. It is likely that not only Strada’s drawing style, but also his antiquarian pro- cedure reflects Giulio’s approach. In the absence of Giulio’s own studies after the Antique, hardly any of which have survived, an analysis of the numismat- ic drawings produced in Strada’s studio provides an instrument to evaluate Giulio’s own handling of antique precept. This is particularly so in those cases in which the architectural reverses of Roman coins were represented. The min- ute image of the coin (of a diameter of up to 5 cm at most and moreover often so worn as to be hardly legible), is blown up to five times its actual size, and the building depicted is in fact a complete and detailed reconstruction based possibly in part on literary sources, but certainly also on a Giuliesque variety of contemporary architecture. A good example is Strada’s drawing of the Pons Aelius, based on a coin of Hadrian, in which the rustica is strongly reminiscent of that of Giulio’s Cortile della Mostra and Pescheria. Its resemblance to Giulio’s 37 On this Magnum ac novum opus, see below, Ch. 3.3. 38 Cf. Jansen 1993, appendix 1b, pp. 232. 39 Vasari/ Milanesi 1906, vol. 5, p. 551: ‘seppe ragionare Giulio, il quale fu molto universale, d’ogni cosa; ma sopra tutto delle medaglie, nelle quali spese assai danari e molto tempo per averne cognizione’.