Page - 383 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 1

©  Dirk Jacob Jansen, ���9  |  doi:�0.��63/9789004359499_0�0 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the prevailing cc-by-nc-nd License. Chapter 8 The Munich Antiquarium 8.1 The Commission By the time Strada’s house had neared some form of completion, he became involved in the one architectural project for which designs in his hand have been preserved, the Antiquarium of the Munich Residenz. It is moreover the only building for the design of which he claimed some credit, in his dedi- cation of his 1575 edition of Caesar to the patron of the Antiquarium, Duke Albrecht v of Bavaria.1 The planning of this huge building was the direct conse- quence of the campaign of acquisition of antique sculpture undertaken by the Duke in the 1560s. This campaign was stimulated and coordinated by Strada’s old patron and friend Hans Jakob Fugger: as we have seen, at Fugger’s clamor- ous bankruptcy in 1564, the Duke had taken over Fugger’s debts in exchange for his library and his collection of antiquities, which became the foundation of the collection brought together at Munich.2 It was natural that Strada, who had been Fugger’s principal agent in the acquisition of antiquities, would again be asked to contribute his expertise: his trips to Italy to acquire additional sculp- tures for the Duke have been mentioned above. And it was equally natural, in view of his architectural know-how, that he would be asked to advise about the best way to display these acquisitions. Initially it was planned to house the antiquities in the Duke’s Kunstkam- mer, located on the first floor of a building that itself was without precedent in Germany. Built between 1562 and 1567 by the ducal architect Wilhelm Egkl, 1 The best overview of the creation of the Antiquarium is given in the dissertation of Renate von Busch (Von Busch 1973, Part iii; contrary to the statement in Diemer/Diemer 1995, p. 56, n. 8, the dissertation has been published, albeit without illustrations); it serves as point of departure for my treatment. Fundamental for the Antiquarium is the huge two-volume catalogue of its sculpture, preceded by exhaustive but not always dependable (and some- times mutually inconsistent) studies of its history and significance and including an impor- tant appendix of source material Weski/Frosien-Leinz 1987. It also includes an admirable critical survey of the literature by Lorenz Seelig (here cited as Seelig 1987). Lietzmann 1987 also discusses Strada’s designs and the possible connection between Antiquarium and the Vienna Neugebäude; since then Dischinger 1988 identified Simon Zwitzel as the architect of the Antiquarium as finally built. Diemer/Diemer 1995 reviewed some of the precedent stud- ies and carefully reinterpreted the available data; ott 2010 provided a critical summary of the state of the question. 2 Cf. Ch. 3.1.