Page - 168 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 1

Chapter 3168 Maffei, Benedetto Egio, Gabriele Faerno and numerous others on many different subjects. All students of Antiquity have recourse to them, as to the temple of the Delphic Apollo, and hear them with great enthusiasm and attention, not dispersing without having obtained great profit from their conversation. Of incredible perfection is such wisdom and elo- quence, when it is found in persons of sensitivity and refinement, and of spotless personal integrity.108 There are sufficient indications to show that Strada did indeed maintain per- sonal contacts with a number of the members of this circle. He claims to have met Onufrio Panvinio [Fig. 3.90] in the Palazzo Farnese ‘where, to my great pleasure, I daily enjoyed the conversation of Onofrio Panvinio, whose great assiduity and precision in his research of past times I have always greatly ad- mired’. These contacts are confirmed by the fact that Panvinio allowed Strada to publish a first version of his treatise on the Fasti Capitolini and also made available to him a copy of his manuscript history of the Popes. Strada’s edition of these two works, the Fasti et Triumphi and the Epitome Pontificum, would appear in 1557 with dedications to the Emperor Ferdinand I and his eldest son, Maximilian King of Bohemia, respectively.109 It appears, however, that Strada owned his good contacts with the rather shy and withdrawn Panvinio in par- ticular to Antonio Agustín [Fig. 3.89] From Agustín’s correspondence with Pan- vinio it appears that it was the former who had drafted some sort of a contract between author and publisher: so if the suggestion that Strada print the book was not actually his, at least he strongly supported it.110 Strada’s contacts with Antonio Agustín appear to have been particular- ly close, and their intimacy was the obvious consequence of the interest in ancient numismatics they shared. By the middle of the sixteenth century the collecting of ancient coins had become so fashionable as to generate a lively community of dealers and peddlers, chiefly in the neighbourhood of the Cam- po de’ Fiori, and several collectors possessed quite impressive cabinets, though by the 1550’s none of these was as yet organized in a very systematic way: that was first to be realized by the splendid collection brought together by Fulvio Orsini, librarian of Alessandro Farnese.111 Strada spent a great deal of his time in inspecting these various coin-cabinets, whose contents he studied often in 108 Strada’s preface to Panvinio 1557<a>. 109 For the publishing history of these books, see below, Part 2, chapter 3. 110 Letters dated Roma, 27 November 1557 and 8 January 1558: ‘io vi mando <…> la fede del contratto con Strada <…’, in Agustìn 1980, pp. 281, 286. 111 On Fulvio Orsini, see Nolhac 1887.