Page - 172 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 1

Chapter 3172 them the rudiments of a method that had developed in Rome in the 1550s. It has been assumed that Agustín did not value Strada’s erudition very highly, on the basis of an often-quoted passage in the Dialoghi: ‘But how can that be’, his questioner asks: <…> that without understanding Latin he [= Pirro Ligorio] could have written well about such things? A[gustín].: In the same way as do Hum- berto Golzio, Enea Vico, Iacopo Strada, and others, so that who reads their books would believe that they have seen and read all the Latin and Greek books that ever were written. They make use of the labour of others and being able to draw well with a brush, they wield a pen equally well.119 This passage, however, has not always been interpreted or translated correctly, and in any case should be taken with some grains of salt. However sceptical he may or may not have been, Agustín’s judgement did allow the quality and utility of the works of Ligorio, Vico, Goltzius and Strada: is it a coincidence that these can still be considered the four greatest of mid-Cinquecento anti- quaries? Agustín obviously appreciated Strada’s drawings and his Epitome the- sauri antiquitatum, if only for the high quality of its printing. As a most astute man of the world, he must have been impressed with the energy with which Strada attempted to get things done, and the ample means which—at least partly thanks to Fugger—he had at his disposal to realize his ambitions. These, rather than Strada’s erudition, must have been the motives which made him advise Panvinio to entrust the manuscripts of his books to Strada to have them printed, and it appears that he himself was instrumental in drawing up the contract. Even when Strada’s publications of these books resulted in a fiasco, Agustín did not intend to break off his relations with Strada merely to please Panvinio: when he visited the Imperial court in 1558 he sided with Strada in his controversy with the Imperial Historiographer Wolfgang Lazius, realizing that though the latter was a good and learned historian, he had an insufficient com- mand of the intricacies of numismatics as a discipline.120 It cannot be doubted that Strada greatly profited from his contacts with Agustín, and though the project of his numismatic Corpus for Hans Jakob 119 Authors translation of Agustín 1587, pp. 131–132. A freer translation in Mandowsky/ Mitch- ell 1963, pp. 31–32, which has more negative connotations: ‘From their works you might imagine they had read all the Latin and Greek books ever written, whereas all they did was to utilize the learning of others. The value of their work lies not in what they wrote but in the excellence of their drawings’. The full passage is discussed below, Ch. 15.1. 120 Both affairs discussed in Von Busch 1973, pp. 197–198, and 199–201, and Jansen 1993<a>, pp.  220–221; cf. below, chs. 4.2 and 14.4.2–3.