Page - 169 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 1

169In Hans Jakob Fugger’s Service detail, and of which he must have copied the best pieces in quick sketches, raw material for the drawings to be included in his numismatic Corpus. In his Antiquorum numismatωn Διασκευέ, the eleven-volume manuscript containing descriptions of the coins Strada had studied that was intended as the scholarly complement of the drawings of the Corpus, Strada always mentioned the col- lection in which he had seen the best-preserved exemplar of each particular coin-type.112 This information not only allows us to largely reconstruct his own not inconsiderable medagliere, but also provides a lot of information about those of a number of Roman collectors. The resulting list of owner’s names and the number of coins each of them possessed should be used with some caution, because it represents no absolute and complete survey, but merely a selection from those cabinets Strada was allowed to visit. So a large number of descriptions given for any particular collection may possibly reflect some superiority in quality or size, but probably chiefly indicates that there Strada was made welcome repeatedly and was given better facilities of study than elsewhere.113 From the people of whom Strada makes such honourable mention in his preface to Panvinio’ Fasti, Antonio Agustín, Gentile Delfini, Achille Maffei and Gabriele Faerno also turn up in this list, while only Benedetto Egio and Ottavio 112 On the Διασκευέ, see Jansen 1993<b>. 113 It is for instance revealing that the Papal collections are not mentioned at all, and only a few incidental items from the holdings of the Farnese. A list based on an examination of the first five volumes included in Jansen 1993<a>, pp. 231–232. Figures 3.88–3.90 Three of the intellectuals with whom Strada consorted in Rome: Cardinal Marcello Cervini, prefect of the Vatican Library and afterwards Pope Marcellus ii (attributed to Jacopino del Conte), Antonio Agustín (anonymous engraving), and Onofrio Panvinio (the portrait from his tomb in Sant’Agostino in Campo Marzio, Rome).