Page - 127 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 1

127In Hans Jakob Fugger’s Service demanded. But Strada did succeed in publishing a resume of this Corpus, his Epitome thesauri antiquitatum. This attractive treatise, illustrated by hundreds of woodcuts, was printed in Lyon in 1553 in a Latin and a French edition, both of which were dedicated to Strada’s patron, who doubtless had helped finance the printing [Figs. 3.18–3.21].36 But Fugger’s library would profit in a more substantial way from Strada’s numismatic studies: the numismatic material that Strada collected was also drawn upon to produce an immense series of pen-and-ink drawings for Fugger, in fact a manuscript version of the planned Corpus, the Magnum ac Novum Opus Continens descriptionem Vitae, Imaginum, numismatum omnium tam Orientalium quam Occidentalium Imperatorum ac Tyrannorum <…> [Figs.  3.22– 3.23]. The obverse and reverse of every single coin were represented each on a large sheet of beautiful paper (‘carta reale’), and in a size very much larger than life (in the drawings the average diameter of the coins is 25 cm) [Figs.  3.26– 3.33]. Initially these drawings were made by Strada himself, later he had them executed—always under his close supervision and probably on the basis of his own sketches—by several draughtsmen he employed in his studio. 36 For a discussion of Strada’s numismatic procedure and the publications he planned, see Jansen 1993a, and below, chs. 14.7 and 15. On the Epitome, see Jansen 1993<a>, pp. 212–221 and, a.o., Haskell 1993, pp. 14–15; Cunnally 1999, pp. 2–33, and 208–209.