Page - 122 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 1

Chapter 3122 as an architect or decorative designer, though the possibility obviously cannot be excluded. Fugger’s almost exclusive interest in Strada’s scholarly potential is not sur- prising, because Fugger was much more a patron of learning than a patron of the arts—very little is known of his activities in that field, in which he was rather overshadowed by his younger cousin Hans.26 As we have seen, Fugger had many contacts with scholars from Germany and the Netherlands, many of whom were resident in Southern Germany: in Augsburg, Nuremberg, at the Bavarian court in Munich or at the University of Ingolstadt. Though he also maintained close contacts with several scholars in Italy—among which the poet Ortensio Landi and the historian and antiquary Onofrio Panvinio—there were few Italian intellectuals actually present in his immediate circle, and few scholars who knew Italy from thorough first-hand experience. The linguist Fugger may have greatly enjoyed the possibility of regularly practising his Italian—in which he was remarkably proficient, to judge from his letters to Panvinio—yet Strada’s first-hand knowledge of the tangible remains of Antiq- uity preserved on Italian soil must have been his principal attraction: whereas the northern scholars in Fugger’s circle by this time may have admired these during their visits to Italy, they had not yet studied them in detail.27 It was this study—the study of the history of the ancient world not only from its literary sources but also from its tangible remains, such as inscrip- tions, coins, and even from the remnants of its works of art, architecture and technique—that was Fugger’s private passion. This passion he had inherited from his father, Raymund Fugger (1489–1535), whose modest, but quite choice collection of antiquities had been one of the sources for Petrus Apianus’ and Bartholomäus Amantius’ Opus inscriptionum sacrosanctae vetustatis totius fere orbis of 1534, which work was dedicated to and financed by Raymund him- self [Figs. 3.14–3.17]. Raymund’s collection, known only through a description by the humanist Beatus Rhenanus and a document relating to the division of Raymund’s estate among his heirs, was housed in two rooms on the upper floor 26 On Hans Fugger, see lill 1908; s.v. ‘Fugger, Johannes’ in ndb 5, 1961; Burkhardt/ Karg 2007. 27 Excerpts from Fugger’s correspondence with Panvinio (preserved in the Vatican Library, cod. Vat. Lat. 6412) are given in the appendix to Maasen 1922, pp. 96–126. When he accom- panied Prince Ferdinand of Bavaria to the wedding of Johanna of Austria, Ferdinand’s cousin, to Francesco de’ Medici, Fugger’s conversation greatly pleased Cosimo i, with whom he had ‘welsch referirt, darauf replicirt, duplicirt und driplicirt worden’ (ibidem, p.  48).