Page - 306 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 1

Chapter 5306 to have been inspired by Maximilian’s gardens in Vienna, just as it borrowed the concept of a star-shaped lodge from Ferdinand’s Hvězda in Prague.92 5.3.4 Conclusion If it can be assumed that Tanner attempted to please his patron, his descrip- tion of the ‘Diaeta ad Puteum Cervinum’ reflects Maximilian’s preferences at least to some extent, and we may conclude that by the time Tanner wrote, the garden loomed much larger in the King’s thought than the Lusthaus inside it. Rather than its architecture, he preferred to have documented the garden that surrounded it, its layout, its planting and its animal inhabitants; this in marked contrast to his brother Ferdinand, who had commissioned carefully drawn de- tailed presentations drawings of his Prague hunting-lodge. This relative prefer- ence for gardening over building seems to be in character with what we know of Maximilian’s interests later in his career.93 Yet one should be wary to con- clude that he did not particularly care for architecture: after all he had begun his project by constructing the Lusthaus, of a similar size and on a hardly less unusual plan as that of his brother in Prague, and he had it quite sumptuously decorated.94 Moreover, when a decade later he began planning another, much 92 Philip Sidney, The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia, Ch. 13: ‘And thus with some other wordes of entertaining, was my staying concluded, and I led among them to the lodge; tru- ely a place for pleasantnes, not vnfitte to flatter solitarinesse; for it being set vpon such an vnsensible rising of the ground, as you are come to a prety height before almost you per- ceiue that you ascend, it giues the eye lordship ouer a good large circuit, which according to the nature of the country, being diuersified betwene hills and dales, woods and playnes, one place more cleere, and the other more darksome, it seemes a pleasant picture of na- ture, with louely lightsomnes and artificiall shadowes. The Lodge is of a yellow stone, built in the forme of a starre; hauing round about a garden framed into like points: and beyond the garden, ridings cut out, each aunswering the Angles of the Lodge: at the end of one of them is the other smaller Lodge, but of like fashion; where the gratious Pamela liueth: so that the Lodge seemeth not vnlike a faire Comete, whose taile stretcheth it selfe to a starre of lesse greatnes’. Sidney stayed in Vienna twice, in 1574 and in 1577, when he served as Elizabeth’s ambassador congratulating Rudolf ii on his accession. On both occasions he also visited Prague. Cf. Girouard 1978, p. 8, who does not, and Skretkowicz, 1982 who does establish the connection with Hvězda (p. 180): ‘Hvězda does, however, appear to lie behind Basilius’s lodge in the New Arcadia and, as such, has played an enduring, if unrec- ognized, role in English letters’. That Sidney chose the names of Astrophel and Stella for his alter-ego (‘star-lover’) and his beloved in the sublime sonnet cycle of that name may likewise be a pointer that Hvězda may have provided him with some of its inspiration. 93 Discussed in greater detail below, in particular Ch. 12. 94 One should be wary also because we do not know in how far the existence of Tanner’s treatise and the Hvězda drawings is representative: their survival is probably due to the fact that they were explicitly intended to document the Prater and Hvězda after their