Page - 124 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 1

Chapter 3124 of his house in the Kleesattlergasse.28 The disposition of the antiquities was determined by their material: the bronze statuettes, a bronze relief and the coin-collection where housed in the first room, the sculpture in marble and stone in the second. Though these rooms also contained paintings and curiosi- ties and must be regarded as a studiolo or a modest Kunstkammer, the antiqui- ties were its most important component: when the collection was sold to the Duke of Bavaria in 1566, they represented three quarters of the total value. By virtue of the vaunted ‘Greek’ and ‘Sicilian’ provenance of the statues described by Beatus Rhenanus, it appears that Raymund had made his acquisitions in Italy, probably chiefly in Venice, through the branches of his firm. Its quality cannot be determined: only two of the statues as described by Rhenanus can be related to objects preserved in Munich—both, it should be said, Renais- sance imitations from Northern Italy.29 At the final division of Raymund’s estate between his heirs in 1548, the collec- tion of antiques was not assigned to Hans Jakob, as one would have expected, but to his brother Raymund the Younger; though in the reshuffling of Fugger property connected with Hans Jakob’s bankruptcy in 1566 the two collections were united and ceded, as we have seen, to Duke Albrecht in partial refunding of Hans Jakob’s debts.30 Unfortunately, even less is known about Hans Jakob’s own collection than about that of his father, and it was obviously subordinate to the library.31 Library and collection filled several rooms of his Augsburg house, and apart from books and manuscripts their contents included coins and medals, full length antique statuary, and a series of marble busts of Roman Emperors and Empresses. There also appear to have been contemporary works of art, such as casts in bronze and/or gesso, paintings and drawings, as is indi- cated in the brief passage devoted to Hans Jakob’s library in the Fuggerchronik: 28 On Raymund’s collection, see Bursian 1874, and Busch 1973, pp. 85–90, who cites Beatus Rhenanus’ Rerum Germanicarum libri tres, Basel 1531 (p. 194) and the deed of division of 1548 in Dillingen, Fugger Archiv, FA 5,6. 29 Von Busch 1973, pp. 88–90, refers to the lively industry of copies of famous antique statues and the popularity of imitations of antique art in general. If the identification of the two statues in Munich is correct, they must be regarded as deliberate forgeries; but Von Busch rightly points out: ‘da sie aber das ganze Jahrhundert hindurch als wertvolle Originale galten, kann die heutige Einschätzung ihre Bedeutung für das Museum des 16. Jahrhun- derts nicht mindern’. 30 Von Busch 1973, p. 115. 31 Described in Von Busch 1973, p. 111–113.