Page - 222 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 1

Chapter 4222 term ‘zumallen’—’to paint’ rather than ‘to draw’—this drawing certainly was a detailed modello, probably executed in watercolours or gouache to indicate the proposed colouring, and it was added to the file Pozzo was to carry with him to the Emperor. Through his long experience as Bausuperintendent, Schallautzer had ac- quired considerable competence in architectural matters, but he did not pre- tend to any specific expertise in the pictorial arts. At least two of the Italian architects he employed at court had received their initial training in that field, Pietro Ferrabosco and Jacopo Strada. Before Schallautzer sent Pozzo to the Emperor, he decided to ask these two masters to critically examine the artist’s proposals. After conferring together, the three instructed Pozzo to make some changes in several of his sketches and to completely redraw some others. Only after Pozzo had carried out these changes and an agreement concerning remu- neration and expenses had been negotiated did Schallautzer sit down to draft his covering letter to the Emperor. Ferdinand appears to have been content with the result, since he imme- diately wrote to the Innsbruck authorities to acquaint them with its details, repeating much of the contents of Schallautzer’s letter. It indicated that Ferdinand intended ‘weder in die gefierten noch gespitzten veldungen von conterfehung wappen oder rosetten ze stellen, nit sonder von allerlai ander vantaseien darein malen ze lassen’: i.e. instead of decorating the square and pointed compartments of the ceiling with the habitual rosettes or coats of arms, he wished to have them filled with various painted ‘fantasies’.67 Before the end of the year Pozzo had begun painting these fantasies, which satisfied the Em- peror sufficiently to extend further commissions to him, all in Innsbruck.68 Yet it appears that before Pozzo started painting, various further changes were discussed, probably now in the presence of the Emperor himself, who had re- turned to Vienna early in September. Chief among these was the reduction of sufficiently detailed for Ferrabosco and Strada to comment on them individually, and to suggest individual alterations and in some cases to have them completely redone, this is far less likely. 67 Letter of 28 July 1559, tla, KS 801; excerpt printed in JdKS 11, 1890, ii, p. clxxxiii, Regest 7366. 68 In 1560 and 1561, Pozzo was commissioned to paint the various biblical scenes decorat- ing the case, as well as the two large wings closing the splendid organ (1560) by Jorg Ebert in the Hofkirche, the church built next to the Hofburg to house the sumptuous mausoleum of Maximilian i; next, in 1561, he painted the decoration of the vaulting of the cloister in the Neuen Stift, the Franciscan monastery annex to the Hofkirche, and fi- nally, in the same year, an altarpiece for one of the principal altars in the same church (Felmayer/Oettinger/Scheicher 1986, pp. 242–243 and 280–283; only the decoration of the organ (illustrated ibid., Figs. 374–367) has been preserved.