Page - 344 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 1

Chapter 6344 Dürer’s Ehrenpforte, the huge set of engravings commissioned by Maximilian i to document his life and triumphs, and thus to perpetuate his ‘gedachtnus’ and the lustre of his dynasty.9 The tomb had a parallel function, so it comes as no surprise that the scenes from the life of the emperor decorating its sides were to be taken from Dürer’s masterpiece as well—a copy of it in loose sheets was added to Schallautzer’s despatch (nr 5). A selection of twenty four scenes had been made, and at Ferdinand’s request Schallautzer had commissioned ‘maister Frannczisco, erzherzogen Ferdinannd etc. maller’—that is Francesco Terzio—to work out one of these scenes in true size (nr 6) and, to have some choice, he had also asked a German painter, Hainrich Voghther, to prepare an- other one (nr 8). The epigraphs that were to identify the scenes were likewise taken from the Ehrenpforte, but had to be rendered into Latin, a task which had been undertaken by Ferdinand’s chancellor for Austria, Hans Jakob Fug- ger’s old friend Georg Sigismund Seld, whose labour was likewise added to the packet for the Emperor (nr. 7). A book of drawings documenting the older stat- ues preserved in Vienna, for which Ferdinand has asked, had been lent out, and could therefore not be included in the file.10 The design Schallautzer added to this package must have been the one preserved in the Albertina and attributed to Francesco Terzio [Fig. 6.2], which implies that in 1556, though the coats of arms, the reliefs with the historical scenes and the statues placed on its cover were still planned in bronze, the tomb itself was already conceived to be ex- ecuted in marble, ‘there is no doubt<…>that the entire architectural structure of the tomb should in fact be executed in marble’.11 Schallautzer’s report shows the great interest Ferdinand attached to this project, and also how carefully and competently Schallautzer handled his master’s commissions. It also makes clear that the material Schallautzer sent provided the basis for further discussion and decision making, for which Ferdinand would have recourse to others in his circle whose taste or whose 9 Both Ehrenpforte and tomb project are salient examples of a chapter in Maximilian’s fic- tionalized autobiography Der Weißkunig: ‘Wie der jung weiß kunig die Gedächtnus in- sonders lieb het’. 10 The Latin versions of the inscriptions printed in Schönherr 1890, pp. 266–268); the book of drawings can perhaps be identified with a preserved codex with drawings in waterco- lour from Jörg Kölderer’s workshop [önb-hs Cod. 8329; cf. RUHM UND SINNLICHKEIT 1996, p. 163–164, cat. nr. 38. 11 Oberhammer 1935, p. 62: ‘es unterliegt kein Zweifel<...>daß das ganze Architekturgerüst der Tumba, tatsächlich in Marmor ausgeführt werden sollte’. The drawing tallies quite well with the description (24 panels, the coats of arms, the frieze offering space for the ‘principall oder sumari epitavi’, the principal inscription). The sober, correct style of its ar- chitectural detail is quite close to that in the background of Terzio’s print series Imagines domus Austriacae.