Page - 112 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 1

Chapter 3112 The Duke’s intervention on Fugger’s behalf is only one expression of the intimate friendship that had developed from about 1547 onward between the young Bavarian Prince and the slightly older Augsburg patrician, ‘dem Fürsten von Bayern vertraut wie ein Bruder’.6 Already in the middle of the 1550’s Fugger appears to have become indispensable to the Duke, whose political opinions and cultural interests he shared and probably strongly influenced. Soon he was entrusted with important diplomatic missions, and he kept the Duke abreast of the latest news by means of the Fuggerzeitungen, regular bulletins drafted by Fugger correspondents and employees all over Europe.7 Following Fugger’s withdrawal from the firm and from political activities in his native Augsburg, his connection with Munich strengthened and assumed a more formal char- acter: at Easter 1565 he was appointed Musikintendant. This in fact involved the supervision of all Italian correspondence, which not only included letters dealing with the acquisition of musical instruments and the recruiting of mu- sicians and singers—doubtless in close consultation with Albrecht v’s cele- brated Kapellmeister Orlando di Lasso—but also with the purchase of books, antiquities, and works of art for the Bavarian court. In the autumn of the same year Fugger was asked to lead the retinue of the young Prince Ferdinand of Bavaria, who was sent to Florence to represent his father at the wedding of his sister-in-law, the Archduchess Johanna, to Francesco de’ Medici. In 1570 Fugger was appointed a Privy Councillor, and he was given a quite exceptional sal- ary. In 1573, finally, the notorious bankrupt was appointed to the newly created function of Hofkammerpräsident, chairman of the duchy’s financial authority: proof that though his bankruptcy had damaged Fugger’s financial position, it had in no way detracted from the general respect his merits entitled him to. Duke Albrecht’s own esteem and affection for Fugger is clearly expressed in his will of 1573, in which he determined that Fugger should continue to receive his salary even if he resigned his functions at court, and that his still outstand- ing debts should be remitted. Fugger, whose health had never been strong, would not profit from these generous legacies, since he predeceased his patron by some four years in July 1575. He was buried at the side of his first wife in the Dominican Church at Augsburg; and since 1857 his memory is kept alive not only by the epitaph he composed himself, but also by a bronze statue at Augs- burg—by that time a Bavarian town—which was erected in his honour by the distant descendant of his friend and patron, King Ludwig i of Bavaria [Fig. 3.5]. 6 Letter of Ambrosius Blaurer to Heinrich Bullinger, June 1563, quoted in Hartig 1917, p. 31, note 7. 7 Zwierlein 2010.