Page - 267 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 1

267Imperial Architect: Background 28 Lietzmann 1987, pp. 33–34. The adventures of the elephant and its material remains have been reconstructed by Annemarie Jordan Gschwend (Gschwend 2012). 29 ‘agua buena, fresca y abundante’, the lack of which was ‘de gran pesadumbre sobre todo para la gente pobre’; ‘un memorable recuerdo de nos’, cited in Holtzmann 1903, p. 86; Díaz Medina 1992, pp. 38–54, p. 50. The project appears not to have been finished; the canaliza- tion of the Pisuerga was only realized two centuries later. 30 When Herrera found that it would be impossible to do this, but that it might be worth- while constructing a system of independent canals, a new committee was set up to review his findings. Maximilian applied to his father to find three experienced German engineers to advise on this matter. This committee did its best, as did Bustamante di Herrera, but the project seems to have fallen through because of its technical complexity and because of the return of Maximilian and Maria to Germany; cf. Quijada 1983. Süleyman, a gift from the king of Portugal which he brought with him on his return from Spain in 1551.28 This naturalistic interest was related to the pas- sion for hunting as a noble pastime which Maximilian shared with most or all of his royal and noble contemporaries. It should be noted here, because it determined the location of his country retreats, and helps explain the huge importance of horses, and consequently of their stabling, at court. It is obvious that Maximilian’s ruling passion for aspects of natural history and for hunting was expressed in the building projects he undertook—among which at least four gardens in the immediate vicinity of Vienna—but it does not imply that he would not have had any interest in the artistic, construc- tive and engineering aspects of architecture as well. The project he proposed, during his regency of Spain, to canalize the Pisuerga in order to improve the water supply to Valladolid, demonstrates his fascination with civil engineer- ing. He took it sufficiently serious to ask Hans Jakob Fugger to send him some engineer from Augsburg, Wolfgang Hefelder, who was to construct the neces- sary fountains and machinery according to a design unknown in Spain: thus he hoped to remedy the existing lack of ‘good, fresh and plentiful water’, which caused ‘great distress above all to the poor’, and also to leave ‘a memorable record of us’.29 Apparently this did not lead to any concrete measures, but sub- sequently he commissioned Bustamante de Herrera, the ‘visidador de obras reales’ or superintendent of the King’s Works, to undertake a physical enquiry into the possibilities of rendering navigable all of the principal rivers of Castile, an ambitious project which prefigures the construction, between 1753 and 1791, of the Canal de Castilla by Ferdinand vi and his minister, the Marqués de la Ensenada.30 In later years Maximilian would indulge this interest in waterworks in gen- eral, and his love of fountains in particular, on several occasions. He would employ the principal aquatic engineer of the period, Hans Gasteiger, to orga- nize the water supply of his greatest enterprise, the Neugebäude. One should