Page - 244 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 1

Chapter 4244 he had intended to employ Strada in that period, and would only allow him this one more trip on the Duke’s behalf.100 ‘In etzlichen sachen’: Maximilian’s choice of words implies that Strada’s ser- vices had been wide-ranging, but the formula Strada uses in his letter to Arch- duke Ernest suggests that the most important had been his involvement in the Emperor’s architectural projects and his manufacture of libri di dissegni: it is tempting to relate these to Strada’s respective functions of architect and anti- quary. The precise character of these services is further specified in the list of capacities in which Strada offered to serve the Archduke. These can roughly be divided into two categories. Doubtless it is largely due to Titian’s portrait that Strada has been often presented as a more-or-less commercial dealer in art and antiquities: his offer to help the Archduke to set up ‘un bel studio di antiquità et medaglie’ and a ‘bellissima libraria di hogni sorte de libri’ seems to fit this image. Much less attention has been paid to Strada’s own artistic endeavour; yet for Strada this seems to have constituted his principal claim to patronage. Certainly no mean pretension, to claim that he can serve the Archduke ‘in qua- lunque cosa dove introvenghi l’arte del dissegno’. Clearly where Strada refers to libri di dissegni, he means books of drawings, drawings documenting ‘designs’ or ‘inventions’, but also in themselves examples of graphic art: and we have seen that he did indeed purvey these to his Imperial patrons. But when he here speaks of the ‘arte del dissegno’ it is evident that he refers to the sketch, the design, the ‘invention’, the concept or plan even, rather than to any specific product of the pen or pencil. As particular examples of his competence he mentions the design of architecture and architectural decoration, and of ‘in- ventions’ for court festivities. But perhaps the most important indication of the character of Strada’s ser- vice in this field lies hidden in two tiny phrases: ‘quello ch’io farò fare sarra lau- dato da hogni huomo di giuditio’ and ‘posso anche servire in far fare inventioni per mascherate’ [italics mine]. ‘Far fare’ rather than ‘fare’, that is ‘to have made’, rather than ‘to make’: what he intended to provide would be actually prepared by others. Strada appears to have viewed his exercise of the arte del dissegno as a mental, rather than a manual process: he intended to provide materials that he had not necessarily produced himself, but which he had ‘invented’ and then commissioned others to execute, though he would closely supervise their work and explicitly reserved both final artistic responsibility and possible merit to 100 HHStA, Familienkorrespondenz A, Karton 2, fol. 320–321; cited in Lietzmann 1987, p. 117 and notes 99–100. Fugger warned the Duke not to impose too much on the Emperor’s courtesy, in case he might refuse to let Strada come when needed most in Munich: Fugger to Duke Albrecht v of Bavaria, 5 March 1569, quoted in Von Busch 1973, pp. 128–129.