Page - 110 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 1

Chapter 3110 many of his interests. It was here that Hans Jakob met his first wife, Ursula von Harrach, whom he married in 1540; the splendid ceremony, to which Charles v delegated his Lord High Steward, took place in Rohrau an der Leitha in Lower Austria, the bride’s home. The young couple settled in Augsburg, and though by this time Hans Jakob had been made a member of the family firm, initially he appears not to have spent much of his time in business, partly because of a lack of interest, partly because his uncle Anton did everything to discourage any actual participation of his nephews in the enterprise. In view of Hans Jakob’s lively interest in politics it is not surprising that he soon came to take part in the administration of his native city. Paradoxically Fugger’s tolerant but determined Catholicism and his family’s traditional ad- herence to the imperial party were an advantage to him in the city which in 1537 had expelled its Roman-Catholic clergy and had adhered to the Schmal- kaldic League. Among Fugger’s first important tasks were embassies to the powerful Imperial minister, Nicolas Perrenot de Granvelle, and to Charles v himself [Fig.  3.3]. As an imperial partisan his intercession was of some use in the conflicts of Augsburg with Charles v, and in 1548 he was appointed to a position in the government of the town. In 1549 he became a member of the Figure 3.2 Giulio Romano, Sacra Famiglia, painted 1520–21 for the Fugger Chapel in Santa Maria dell’Anima, Rome. Figure 3.3 Lambert Sustris (?), after Titian: Emperor Charles V; Munich, Alte Pinakothek.