Page - 121 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 1

121In Hans Jakob Fugger’s Service The Munich Hofbibliothek, which at that time was being moved into new premises designed and built for the purpose, was thus enriched with a collec- tion of several times its own size: Fugger’s library had already swallowed whole the entire library that had once belonged to the Nuremberg humanist Hart- mann Schedel. Fugger had acquired this collection en bloc in 1552, and he had maintained it as a separate entity. Fugger’s success in his attempt at  complete- ness can be deduced from the present holdings of the Munich Staats bibliothek, as described by Hartig: though he gives no estimate of the number of printed books in Fugger’s library, this must have exceeded rather than have fallen short of 10.000 volumes; and together with Schedel’s codices the library contained about a thousand volumes of manuscripts.23 Hartig’s survey is doubtless a more reliable guide than Jacopo Strada’s panegyric on the library to which he himself had contributed some of his proudest achievements; yet it is surely no coincidence that Strada, who had been involved in its expansion since about 1544, chose to demonstrate its excellence by means of a comparison with Gesner’s Bibliotheca Universalis.24 3.3 Fugger’s Employment of Strada Strada’s acquaintance with Hans Jakob Fugger dates from the middle of the 1540s at the latest. Though it is quite possible that Strada had first met Fugger in Italy, it is not very likely that Strada came to Germany in response to Fugger’s explicit request: in that case he would have settled in Augsburg, rather than in Nuremberg. But though we do not know exactly when and how their contact was established, their meeting was inevitable in view of their common inter- ests, if only because Strada must have been eager to study the well-known col- lection of antiquities that had belonged to Fugger’s father, Raymund the Elder, as well Hans Jakob’s own collection.25 It appears that Fugger considered Strada ab initio as a scholar, an antiquary, rather than as an artist: we have no concrete indications that he commissioned or acquired any original works of art, such as paintings or objects of goldsmith’s work, from him or that he employed him Wolfgang Prommer—can still be noted in many books and manuscripts in the Munich Staatsbibliothek. 23 Hartig 1917, pp. 135–137. 24 Dedication to the Duke of Bavaria in Strada’s edition of Caesar: Caesar 1575, p. *4-r.: ‘Certè qui Bibliothecam Tigurinam posteà ter locupletatam in typis mandarunt, paria cum hac haud quaquam potuerunt facere, cuius describendae si illis facta fuisset copia in iv. maio- ra volumina ipsis sua Bibliotheca excrevisset’. 25 Von Busch 1973, pp. 85–90.