Page - 180 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 1

Chapter 3180 graphic material from the estate of Perino del Vaga, who had died in 1547. In the preface to his 1575 edition of Serlio’s Settimo Libro Strada related how he went and visit the widow of his old friend, as Strada called Perino, Caterina Penni, the sister and heir of Giovan Francesco Penni, another of Raphael’s pupils: <…> before I left [Rome], I went to visit Madonna Catharina, who had been the wife of Perino del Vaga, court painter of the Pope, in his time the foremost artist in Rome and when alive a great friend of mine. Discussing with her the materials of her late husband, I found that she was disposed to sell all his drawings rather to me, than to whomsoever else she knew, not wishing that such [splendid] efforts would remain in Rome, and that others would abuse them to increase their own glory. Thus I could buy from her two chests [full] of drawings all by hand, among which were all the works he himself ever made, and also many by Raffaello d’Urbino, who had been his master. Among these drawings I found a very great quantity of architecture, both [of projects] in Rome, and [of projects] in France and in other places in Italy.133 Obviously proud of his Musaeum—as such he indicated the collection housed in his splendid mansion in Vienna—Strada might easily have overestimated the importance of his acquisitions. Therefore it is fortunate that his enthusi- astic account is again corroborated by a passage in Giovanni Battista Arme- nini’s De veri precetti della pittura. He relates that when he was living in Strada’s house as one of the young draughtsmen employed in his projects, he had been able to study the drawings from Perino’s estate at leisure: Among so many others [I have seen] I well remember the many drawings left by Perino at his death, which, when I was in Rome, were all bought, and by one of his daughters sold, for a price of fifty gold scudi, which were paid out in my presence, in the year 1556, by a merchant from Mantua with whom I was living at the time <…> and for that reason, apart from 133 Serlio 1575, fol. a iii i-r. Since Caterina Penni probably had earlier been pressed to sell or give away some of the drawings in her possession, in particular as regards Raphael’s draw- ings, Strada’s acquisition may not really have included all the effects left at Perino’s death almost ten years earlier; Armenini’s reference to ‘all’ the drawings purchased by Strada could refer to all those left at Perino’s death, or to all those left in Caterina’s possession by 1556. The fact that Strada paid well and in cash may have been an aditional motivation for Caterina to sell the drawings to him, rather than to someone else.