Page - 274 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 1

Chapter 5274 to complete the unfinished Weißkunig, must have been eager to educate his children according to the precepts of their illustrious ancestor. In that they were possibly also confronted with the works of their great-grandfather’s favourite artist, Albrecht Dürer. Besides the monumental eulogy of Maximil- ian’s reign, the Ehrenpforte, these included three influential treatises. Dürer’s treatise on the perfect proportion of the human body may not have come high on the reading list provided by the boys’ tutors, but the other two would have stood a better chance. The first, Underweysung der Messung, mit dem Zirckel und Richtscheyt, in Linien, Ebenen unnd gantzen corporen (Nuremberg 1525) could serve, perhaps in Camerarius’ Latin translation of 1532, as a practical complement and commentary on Euclid, but it also was of immediate prac- tical value for the practice of architecture. Thus the second topic of the first section, the Schneckenlinie or snail’s line, basically explains the construction of the volute of the Ionian capital. Likewise the third section, ‘Von den Cor- perlichen dingen’, i.e. about three-dimensional objects, opens with the design of columns, pilasters and obelisks, including the piers of a Gothic church, but paying much more attention to the geometrical base of the classical column, including the calculation of the entasis and the proportions of capitals, bases and pedestals. As future princes and generals, the young Archdukes also may have stud- ied Dürer’s treatise on fortification, Etliche vnderricht, zu befestigung der Stett, Schloß vnd Flecken, which had been published in Nuremberg in 1527, and in which the laws of geometry were applied to an eminently practical topic.44 It would be interesting to know whether they read more about architecture and fortification, and if so, what. At the peace conference at Le Cateau-Cambrésis Cardinal Granvelle had taken the English commanders to task for their neglect of the newest developments in warfare, which had led to their loosing Calais to the French. It was this that moved Sir William Cecil, Elizabeth’s prime minister, to ask his agents on the continent to scout for capable engineers who might be tempted to come to England: Jacopo Aconcio’s transfer to London, about whom more below, was a first result. But he also asked them to inspect suit- able examples on the spot and to collect documentary material. He moreover asked Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, the Ambassador in France, for lists of avail- able books on the topic, which he was studying himself: ‘I am now and then occupied with Vitruvius De Architectura; and therefore if there be any writ- ers besides Vitruvius, Leo Baptista [Alberti] and Albert Dürer (all which three 44 In his dedication to Ferdinand i, Dürer claims that he had written it specially for him: ‘Dieweil sich nun zudregt das E.Mt. etlich stett und flecken zu befestigenn verschaft hat…’.