Page - 275 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 1

275Imperial Architect: Background I have) I would gladly have them’.45 It can be assumed that these authors were also read or at least occasionally consulted at the court of Ferdinand i. We do not know whether these readers included the young Maximilian and Ferdinand, but it is not unlikely. In the 1550s both showed themselves capable of reading architectural drawings, which implies that, for study or as a pastime, they had made themselves acquainted with at least some of the literature per- taining to architecture that became available in the 1540s and 1550s. In addi- tion to Euclid and Dürer’s geometry they might have studied a simple manual of perspective, such as Jean Pélérin’s illustrated De Artificiali Perspectiva (Toul 1505, reprinted 1508, 1509, 1521) [Fig. 5.27].46 Probably their early training would not (yet) have included a complex and difficult text such as Vitruvius itself, but they might have studied the woodcuts in the first illustrated editions, pub- lished by Fra Giovanni Giocondo in 1511 and by Cesare Cesariano in 1521, the 45 Letter dated October 12, 1559, cited in White 1967, p. 430. Vitruvius was at that time avail- able in various Latin editions, the illustrated Italian translation by Cesare Cesariano (De Lucio Vitruvio Pollione De Architectura, Como 1521), the French translation by Jean Mar- tin (Architecture, ou Art de bien bastir, Paris, 1547) or the German translation by Walther Rivius (Vitruvius Teutsch, Nuremberg 1548), whereas the splendid Italian translation by Daniele Barbaro and illustrated by Palladio had just been published (1556). The Latin original of Alberti, De Re Aedificatoria was available only in manuscript, or in the Italian translations by Pietro Lauro (Venice 1546) or, a more likely candidate, that by Cosimo Bartoli (Florence 1550). 46 Parts of its contents were popularized by their inclusion in one of the earliest illustrated encyclopaedias, Gregor Reisch’s Margarita Philosophica, first printed in Freiburg in 1503. Figure 5.27 ‘Les degrez / et la galerie’, in Jean Pélérin’s De Artificialia Perspectiva, Toul 1521. Figure 5.28 Title page of Diego Sagredo, Medidas del Romano, Toledo, 1549. Figure 5.29 Title page of Walther Ryff, Vitruvius Teutsch, Nuremberg 1548.