Page - 143 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 1

143In Hans Jakob Fugger’s Service <…> coming to France, I have met and frequented the company of Mon- sieur Guillaume Choul, born in that city, highly experienced in history and in the explanation of the reverses of coins and figured medals; a man moreover of such rare and ample judgment that one may easily count him among the first experts in this field, and not without reason, both for his excellent memory and his good and refined judgment. In his mag- nificent house (as I don’t think it necessary to hide) I have seen a great quantity of all sorts of antique medals, among which some are of gold, others of silver, and the rest of copper, which he has lent to me to copy those that I needed for my book of coin-reverses.65 Both Strada and Du Choul refer to each other in their printed works, and ap- pear to have mutually exchanged information and studied each other’s coins: whereas in his A.A.A. Numismatωn Antiquorum Διασκευέ Strada only described some individual pieces from other Lyon collections, he describes scores of those he had seen in Du Choul’s cabinet, which implies that these not only were of a better quality, but also that Strada had had much greater opportunity to study them in detail. At the time Strada was already sufficiently interested and expert in architecture—probably stimulated by his contacts with Serlio— to be able to provide Du Choul with his own reconstructions (after the reverse of medals) of the temples of Janus Quadrifrons and of Jove Capitolinus: wood- cuts of these were included in Du Choul’s Discours de la religion des anciens Romains, first published in Lyon in 1556 [Figs. 3.56–3.58]. It is quite possible translation of Visagier’s Latin epigram on Du Choul, which well illustrates the range of his interests and the renown of his works: ‘Toi qui, au prix d’un immense labeur, ne laisses pas mourir la Rome antique ni les monuments anciens, révélant à nos yeux théatres, jeux et statues, images ciselées, forums, portiques et colonnes, monnaies et triomphes des Cés- ars, les diverses factions politiques, les rites des pontifes, les honneurs sacrés de la Cité, ses charges, ses liberalités, ses dépenses, ses délices, ses ressources, les palestres, ses splen- deurs, les généalogies et les faisceaux de puissants consuls, autels de dieux et de déesses, spectacles, superbes demeures, peintures, sculptures, effigies, urnes, cendres, trophées et cirques, collèges et confréries, thermes et bains publics, actions de grâces; bref, toi qui désires préserver de la mort tout ce qui est antique et qui veux que renaisse la Rome anci- enne, tout ce qui est exposé à la ruine, tu le perpétues pour l’éternité, Duchoul. Pour un tel labeur, quelle récompense obtiendras-tu?’ [from Ioannis Vulteii Remensis Epigrammatum libri iv, Lyon 1537, iv, p. 248]. Du Choul’s most important books are his De la religion des anciens Romains (Lyon 1547) and his Discours sur la Castramétation et discipline militaire des Romains (Lyon 1555), both of which were quickly and repeatedly reprinted in several languages. A splendid illustrated presentation manuscript Des antiquités romaines pre- mier livre, with beautiful drawings, dedicated to Francis i and preserved in the Biblioteca Reale in Turin, can be considered as the first volume of a lost twelve-volume encyclopae- dia of the history of the Roman Empire, Antiquitez de Rome, that Du Choul was preparing. 65 Strada 1553<b>, p. bbv.