Page - 156 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 1

Chapter 3156 paid him with a goodly sum of money for everything that he had, both drawn in own hand, and drawn by others <…>. Now when I left, it was not without great sadness on both sides that we said goodbye to one another. After my departure he himself hardly stayed any longer before returning to Fontainebleau, and there the good old man ended his life, leaving a great name behind him there, just as he had done in other parts of the world. For one can well say that he has restored Architecture, and has made it easy to everyone; and has pleased more with his books, than ever did Vitruvius before him: because the latter, for being a difficult author, was not that easily understood by everyone.82 This sympathetic and perceptive tribute shows that Strada even twenty years later still greatly valued what had been—together with his contacts with Guil- laume du Choul and the printing of his Epitome thesauri antiquitatum—the most memorable event of his very profitable visit to France. 3.7 Civis Romanus: Strada’s Sojourn in Rome Strada cannot have left Lyon before the end of 1553, since he obviously would have been eager to carry a sufficient number of copies of his treatise, the print- ing of which was finished on the 6th of November 1553. So he would have ar- rived in Rome about Christmas of that year at the earliest. He decided to leave, according to the preface of his edition of Serlio’s Settimo Libro, shortly after the unexpected death of Pope Marcellus ii in the spring of 1555; probably in fact only after the election of his successor, Paul iv Carafa, shattered any hopes for further papal employment. It is not known exactly when he left; by December 1556 he appears to have been back in Nuremberg already for some time. So his sojourn in Rome probably lasted a year and a half at least, about two and a half years at most; in any case sufficiently long to refresh his memories of his earlier visit in the mid- or late 1530s, to get thoroughly acquainted with the latest de- velopments in antiquarian learning, and to examine the artistic achievements of the last years of the reign of Paul iii as well as the considerable enterprises realized during the relatively brief pontificate of Julius iii [Fig. 3.82]. 3.7.1 The Roman milieu What did he find? The long pontificate of the Farnese Pope (1534–1549), Paul iii, had helped to repair much of the damage done by the Sacco di Roma in 1527. 82 Serlio 1575, fol. a iv-r.