Page - 157 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 1

157In Hans Jakob Fugger’s Service Doubtless the flight from Rome of many patrons and artists and the tempo- rary stop in commissions did interrupt artistic production for some time and limited the quantity of art produced. But Paul iii was as forceful a personal- ity and as active a patron as Julius ii and Leo x. Already in the early thirties construction of St. Peters was continuing again and many new palaces and churches were rising all over town. Important commissions completed in the period immediately preceding Strada’s arrival or still under way during his stay included the Palazzo Farnese, the Orti Farnesiani on the Palatine and the Farnese castle at Caprarola, and the Villa d’Este in Tivoli. Construction of Vi- gnola’s Villa Giulia—which as the principal project of the reigning Pontiff, Ju- lius iii, was probably the most influential example—had just begun [Fig. 3.83]. Decoration schemes included Michelangelo’s Last Judgment and the Sala Pao- lina in the Vatican, the decorations executed by Perino del Vaga and his crew in Castel Sant’Angelo [Fig. 3.81], Francesco Salviati’s decorations in the Palazzo Farnese and the Palazzo Ricci-Sacchetti and the fresco’s Vasari had painted in a mere hundred days in the Cancelleria. So the change in quality of artistic achievement in Rome in the 1530s is not a result of the Sack only: the development in style away from the ideals of High Renaissance art, already discernible in the 1520s, was an independent and inevitable movement. If Raphael had lived, if Giulio would have remained in Rome, Roman art of the 1520s and 1530s might well have been of a somewhat higher quality and of a greater degree of originality, but it is unlikely that it Figure 3.82 Vincenzo Danti, Pope Julius iii, bronze in front of Perugia Cathedral, 1555. Figure 3.83 Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola et al., the Nymphaeum of the Villa Giulia, Rome, commissioned by Pope Julius iii and executed 1553–57. Figure 3.81 Perino del Vaga, Luzio Romano and Livio Agresti: Decoration of the Sala Paolina of Castel St Angelo, Rome, commissioned by Pope Paul iii and executed 1542–1547.