Page - 223 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 1

223Tasks at the Imperial Court the number of compartments to thirty-five, including a central compartment containing the Imperial coat of arms held by two gilt griffins. The consequent larger size of the panels made them more suitable for the planned ‘vantasey- en’: these were not grotesques, as the term might suggest, but a set of depic- tions of ‘die historien weilend kaiser Maximilianen und ains tails kaiser Karls hochlobichisten gedechtnussen schlachten’, scenes from the life of Maximilian i and some of Charles v’s battles. Further changes were only undertaken after Pozzo had arrived in Innsbruck, and it turned out that the Visierung on which he had based his drawings had not been sufficiently detailed: the brackets car- rying the ceiling had not been indicated, so he had to plan a different, wider border section; for the extra work involved in this, and some further changes in the fantasies themselves, he received some additional payment.69 Though the documents relating to this project suggest several questions that cannot be easily answered, they still throw some light on the handling of artis- tic commissions at the Imperial court. The commission was an important one: as the principal decoration of the principal room of one of the principal Impe- rial residences, it had great representative value, the more so since it would be about the first example of Imperial splendour inspected by any Italian prince, prelate or envoy visiting Habsburg territory. From Schallautzer’s letter it appears unlikely that Ferdinand’s directions, or the accompanying Visierung, had included any specific iconographical instructions: Schallautzer certainly would have referred to that. The use of the word ‘Fantesey’ can be stretched to suggest that Ferdinand himself had indicated that some secular, literary or his- torical theme was intended, and it is quite possible that the scenes from the life of Maximilian i and the battles of Charles v actually painted were envisaged from the outset. Documentation on the former—Dürer’s Ehrenpforte in the first place—was available in any case because of the contemporary planning of Maximilian’s tomb, likewise decorated with his principal gesta. Certainly the letter implies that Ferdinand had great confidence that Pozzo was capable of coming up with a series of subjects suitable for the location. Schallautzer’s letter provides a lively vignette of the day to day tasks of the leading artists at court. Imagine a lively discussion taking place on a hot sum- mer day—it can be stifling in Vienna—conducted in German spoken with a Viennese and two different Italian accents, and possibly partly in Italian trans- lated by Strada or Ferrabosco for Schallautzer’s benefit; moreover garnered with Italian and Latin quotations. Imagine this discussion taking place around a table covered in drawings piled about one central plan—the ‘ Vysierung’ 69 Advice of the Tirol government to the Emperor on Pozzo’s request for additional pay- ment, 28 January 1564, printed in JdKS 11, 1890, ii, p. ccxxii, Regest 7762.