Page - 343 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 1

343Projects for Emperor Ferdinand i 6.2 The Tomb of Maximilian i in Innsbruck In August 1559 (or perhaps 1560, the year is not indicated) Jacopo Strada was again employed in a similar consultative capacity, now in connection with the most important dynastic commission of the Austrian Habsburgs, the comple- tion of the tomb of the Emperor Maximilian i. This tomb had been planned by that Emperor himself and begun during his lifetime, and was intended to be placed in a chapel or mausoleum to be constructed after his own designs in the church of St. Georg in Wiener Neustadt. Its completion was enjoined on the Emperor’s heirs in his will, and it naturally fell to Ferdinand i, as sovereign of the Austrian Erblande, to execute his grandfather’s last wishes. He took this task quite seriously, but nevertheless did not manage to accomplish it within his own lifetime. The vicissitudes of this stupendous project have been de- scribed elsewhere; suffice here to note that by the time of Ferdinand’s acces- sion to the Empire the planned location of the monument had been shifted from Wiener Neustadt to Innsbruck, that a new church specifically designed to house it, the Hofkirche, was nearing completion, as was a large part of the huge array of over life-size bronze statues of historical and symbolical ances- tors and precursors of the Habsburg Emperors that was to accompany the Im- perial tomb proper.6 In 1555 or early in 1556 Ferdinand commanded Hermes Schallautzer to de- vise the collocation of the as yet inexistent tomb and the forty large and hun- dred small bronze statues and the thirty-two bronze portrait busts that were to accompany it in the new church. Schallautzer’s report was accompanied by a ground plan of the new church showing the collocation of tomb and stat- ues (nr 9), a ground plan (nr 3) of the tomb proper and a Visierung or design of one half of its elevation, showing ‘how the whole should be ornamented’ (nr 4).7 Schallautzer’s description suggests that, like the accompanying stat- ues, at least the historical scenes decorating the planned tomb or cenotaph were to be cast in bronze.8 It was to include all the coats of arms taken from 6 Actually it is a cenotaph, since Maximilian’s remains were never transferred from Wiener Neustadt. On the history of the tomb, see a.o. Schönherr 1890; Oberhammer 1935; Dressler 1973, pp. 46–60; EGG 1974, pp. 56–57; Scheicher 1984. 7 Schönherr 1890, p. 204; the text of Schallautzer’s report to Ferdinand printed ibidem in ap- pendix i, p. 264–265: ‘So haben eur Römisch khgl. maj. etc. die gruntlegung der kirchen, da- rein das grab geseczt soll werden, mit austailung der 40 grossen bilder unden, desgleichen in de höch zwischen auf den pheilern di 100 clainen bilder und an der prust baider porkirchen die 32 prustbilder hieneben mit nr. 9.’ 8 Ibidem, ‘mer die vierundzwainzig haubtstuckh aus der ernportn mitzueschickhen, grösz, wie es in das grab gegossen soll werden<...>’.