Page - 412 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 1

Chapter 8412 tals of the coupled pilasters on the upper level. The manner of projection and the drawing technique is exactly the same in both elevations, and there can be no reasonable doubt that, with the ground plan, these are the drawings for his Antiquarium project that Strada handed over to Hans Jakob Fugger in the first days of March 1569. Yet whereas the interior elevation tallies in all respects with the ground plan, the exterior elevation presents at least one major problem, which well ex- plains the doubts as to its connection with the ground plan registered by some authors. This is the inclusion of basement windows, whereas neither ground plan nor interior elevation give any indication of the presence of a basement. In view of the weight of the statues to be placed in the main hall, a cellar under it would pose specific structural problems, the more so in that Strada’s interior elevation places the larger statues on pedestals exactly above the hy- pothetical cellar windows in the exterior elevation [cf. Figs. 8.17 and  8.20]. And even if a basement would be feasible, under the large hall its ceiling would be too low—actually at, or even below ground-level—to allow illumination directly from the outside. If a cellar had been planned only under the entrance and/or the service spaces at either end, this would have implied a higher floor level in these areas, and a set of steps leading down from the vestibule into the main hall. This might certainly create a satisfying, even a monumental ef- fect—but again the ground plan provides no indication of any such difference in level. This problem accentuates the provisional nature of Strada’s design. It is clear that at the time of his discussions with Fugger many decisions as to the nature of the building had not yet been taken in Munich: the question of its foundations and the possible inclusion of an accessible substructure probably was one of these. Another one is the question of its access: in his ground plan Strada opts for a monumental vestibule, implying an equally monumental entrance portal in the center of the short east facade, but in his elevations he does not include this, probably because at that point of time it had not yet been decided how access to the Antiquarium was to be realized: a covered cor- ridor or arcaded gallery connecting it to the Ducal residence may have been a serious option.43 The presence of the basement windows in the elevation can better be ex- plained as Strada’s perhaps not completely satisfying solution to a complicated design problem. This problem was caused by the decision to construct a 43 Strada notes that the Duke could reach the Antiquarium unseen: ‘Huc Celsitudo tua nulli conspecta, è suo castello, quoties libet, commeare potest... (Caesar 1575, p. *4v.); cf. Diemer/Diemer 1995, p. 59 and note 19.