Page - 184 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 1

Chapter 3184 unknown.139 It appears that Strada in any case was attempting to find some more exalted patron during his residence in Rome: he may well have cultivated his connection with Cardinal Farnese in the hope that he might thus obtain some profitable appointment in the Church or at the court of the Cardinal’s brother, Duke Ottavio of Parma. Armenini relates that a copy of the Loggia drawings was made for Philip ii, which Strada would have carried to his court in person. Though Armenini, recording his memories thirty years after the fact, is often unreliable, and there is no indication that Strada ever did in person visit either Spain or the Netherlands, it is just possible that Strada had con- sidered Philip ii as a potential patron. Certainly Antonio Agustín advised his friend Panvinio to dedicate his books to Philip ii, rather than to his cousin Maximilian, future Emperor, but at the time mere titular King of Bohemia, and Strada himself had at one time thought of presenting one of his numismatic manuscripts to Philip’s father, the Emperor Charles v, though he thought bet- ter of this at the latter’s abdication.140 Connections with the Spanish court might have been easily established through the intervention of Fugger or the recommendation of Granvelle or Agustín. We have already seen that Granvelle was interested in the type of material that Strada collected and that was pro- duced in his workshop, and in later years Philip ii would not have been averse to obtaining such material for the library of the Escorial. All the same it appears very unlikely that Strada ever acted on such con- siderations. But he did claim that he succeeded in obtaining the patronage of Pope Julius iii himself: <…> when I found myself in Rome, not many months passed, before I was called into the service of Pope Julius iii Monti, who lived at that time. But it lasted only a few months, because His Holiness died. But Marcello 139 Imagines omnium numismatum antiquorum, quae ex auro, argento et aere à Romulus us- que ad C. Iulium Caes. Romae signata sunt. Summa diligentia cum uniusqcuiusque notis à Iacobo Strada Mantuano depictae, Romae ex Musaeo Iacobi Stradae Mantuani mdliiii, Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, ms. 1019. In view of Armenini’s testimony, the claim that these drawings all are autographs should perhaps be taken with a grain of salt. The vol- ume may not have been made in response to a specific commission, but kept to be offered to a promising patron, when a separate dedication could have been easily added. 140 Agustín to Panvinio, Roma 2 october 1557: ‘<…> quanto alle dedicationi di libri. tra quelli duoi principi pigliaria quel che hora è piu sublime, et piu amico di uostro patron, idest il Re di Spagna. ben che l’altro sia piu propinquo al imperio. ma sara un Re di scachi senza l’agiuto del suo nepote’, printed in Agustín 1980, nr. 191, p. 277. The illuminated titlepage of Strada’s De consularibus numismata [önb, ms 9411] depicted Charles v’s device, the Pillars of Hercules, which was pasted over with a strip of marbled paper before Strada presented it to Ferdinand i.