Page - 193 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 1

193Tasks at the Imperial Court and artists in search of jobs, benefices or commissions. The most likely opportunity for Strada to have met the Marquis of Marignano would have been at such an occasion, for instance the Diet in Augsburg in 1547. So even if he had never been formally introduced to Ferdinand and his two eldest sons, he could have seen them and have been aware of some of their inter- ests. Thus he would have known of Ferdinand’s interest in antiquities and his taste for architecture in the antique manner—demonstrated in his refurbish- ing of the Vienna Hofburg and the beautiful Summer Palace he had built in the gardens of the castle at Prague for his consort, Queen Anna—and through Fugger he would have heard about the similar interest of the two young Archdukes.7 4.1.2 Strada’s Arrival at the Court of Ferdinand i So it is not surprising that Strada was eager to profit from the first opportunity to establish contact with Ferdinand and his court. This opportunity offered itself soon after his return to Nuremberg. As discussed in Chapter 2, in the autumn of 1556 Strada’s one-time neighbour, the goldsmith Wenzel Jamnitzer, had been summoned to Vienna by King Maximilian, from whom he received a commission which kept him busy for some considerable time. At this time Archduke Ferdinand also entrusted him with a commission, the manufacture of an ambitious table-fountain depicting the Garden of Eden, for which he proposed that Strada, as a competent ‘Maler’ or painter, would prepare one or more Visierungen or designs. Strada thought it necessary, said Jamnitzer, to see the Archduke personally, both to be better informed about his wishes, and to show him various drawings and patterns, and he referred to Strada’s own letter to the Archduke. This document, of the same date as and enclosed in Jamnitzer’s letter, reads as an undisguised bid for patronage. Strada stressed that, for an ambi- tious work as this, a simple drawing would not be sufficient: it needed a model [modello] or rather a three-dimensional matrix [patrone], such as one prepares when constructing a palace, for the use of the masters who are to be employed [in the project].8 He dwelt on the need for detailed consideration of its ico- nography, and suggested that the execution should be closely supervised by one person who would well understand its conception. He continued that he 7 When Maximilian, as Viceroy of Spain for his father-in-law, made plans to regulate the course of the Pisuerga in Valladolid, he wrote to Fugger to recruit the hydraulic technicians he needed for this. 8 DOC. 1556-12-22, discussed above, Ch. 2.5.3: ‘un modello, overo patrone, nel modo come si fa quando si vole edificar un palazzo, acciò che li maestri che lavorerano se ne possino servire<...>’.