Page - 415 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 1

415The Munich Antiquarium Figures 8.26–8.27 Raphael’s palazzo Branconio dell’Aquila in Rome (1520; engraving by Pietro Ferrerio, 1634), compared to Strada’s design for the Antiquarium. to camouflage the discrepancy in height between the two floors. The Munich designer did this by lifting the windows lighting the Antiquarium above the lower entablature, that is, into the balustrade level of the top floor. In fact he may have chosen to imitate Michelangelo’s top floor in the Palazzo Farnese courtyard as illustrated in Etienne Du Pérac’s engraving, not just because it was a prestigious and trendy example, but because it suggested a suitable technical solution to precisely this problem [Figs. 8.5–8.6].45 Strada opted for a more strictly expressive solution: in his design the top of the entablature of the lower level does correspond with the actual floor level of the library. This means that he had to camouflage the greater height of the anti- quarium level in a different way, as well as finding a solution for the low rectan- gular windows which he planned immediately under the arches, windows of an awkward shape and in an awkward position for the exterior facade. Strada solved his problem in a quite unusual, perhaps even original fashion.  His fa- cade is basically modelled on Sansovino’s Biblioteca Marciana [Fig. 8.11–8.12]. Though quite dissimilar in its details, Strada adopts Sansovino’s corner pilas- ters framing an ongoing arcade. In his project the lower level is, however, too high to adopt Sansovino’s arcade carried on piers with superimposed columns of the same scale as the framing corner pilasters: a very classical design itself going back to the Basilica Aemilia in the Forum Romanum. So Strada’s corner 45 Michelangelo’s windows in the balustrade level of the second floor light a low mezzanine corridor above the first floor arcade, but the principle is the same as in the anonymous Antiquarium design.