Page - 243 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 1

243Tasks at the Imperial Court Your Highness, I can serve him extremely well, and what I will have had made will be praised by every man of taste [‘hogni huomo di giuditio’]. I can also serve in having made designs [‘inventioni’] for masques, jousts and other nice things such as one day may occur to Your High- ness. Also if he should wish to make a beautiful cabinet of antiquities and medals, I will serve him in that as well. Should he wish to set up a most beautiful library of all sorts of books, also in that I will be able to serve him. In many things I can serve Your Most Serene Highness, which would take too long to mention all, and perhaps as well as any man in Germany and Italy. This letter is of paramount interest as an indication both of Strada’s actual em- ployment by Maximilian ii and of his own perception of it. In interpreting it, many things should be taken into consideration. Strada doubtless either pre- sented his request in person or through one of Ernest’s courtiers, most probably his own elder son Paolo, who had been appointed one of Ernest’s gentlemen of the chamber. In fact the Archduke must have known perfectly well who Strada was, if only because—as we shall see below—he used to frequent Strada’s studio in his infancy. The fact that Strada found it necessary to introduce himself in this formal manner perhaps indicates that this official suit for patronage was directed as much at the Archduke’s advisers as at his person. This is corroborated by his signature, ‘Jacopo Strada, Architetto et Antiquario’, including both the official functions he had discharged at court, whereas in all other correspondence he was content with the single appellation of Antiquario della Sacra Cesarea Maestà. Secondly, it is important that Strada himself states quite clearly that he had been continually employed by Maximilian ii. Though it is likely that in this bid for patronage he presented his qualifications in the rosiest light, his claim must be taken seriously: he could not afford to wildly exaggerate his services when—after twenty years of residence in Vienna—these were so well known, or could so easily be checked. It is moreover corroborated by Maximilian ii himself: on one of the occasions that his brother-in-law, Duke Albrecht, re- quested to be allowed to make use of Strada’s services, the Emperor replied that he would concede this, ‘wiewol ich seiner in etzlichen sachen nit wol geraten khan’, ‘though in many things I can hardly spare him’.99 On a second occasion, he reacted irritably to Albrecht’s supposition that, because of a projected trip to Bohemia, he would have no need of Strada, and noted that, on the contrary, 99 BHStA-LA 4461, fol. 347v; printed in bibl 1916–1921, ii, p. 50 (and cited in Lietzmann 1987, p. 116).