Page - 456 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 1

Chapter 9456 Maximilian himself explicitly formulated his personal concern in a letter of 4  December 1568 to Count Prospero d’Arco, his ambassador in Rome, asking for detailed information on garden projects in Rome: Because in the grave and manifold cares and troubles we sustain for the benefit and safety, not only of our own kingdoms and dominions, but of the whole Christian world, we are used to seek for recreation and relax- ation of the soul in the cultivation of gardens, we desire to see plans and images both of gardens and of pleasure houses and other garden orna- ments that can be found in Rome.35 He stresses that these should include both plans and elevations, and he asked in particular for designs for ‘artificial fountains and grottoes’. Maximilian more- over asked Count d’Arco to try and obtain as many antiques suitable for the decoration of gardens as he could lay his hands on in Rome. Similar requests for information on other projects, especially gardens and garden buildings, for plants and seeds, for animals, and for antiquities and works of art to be used in his own new garden were sent to his representatives in Venice, in Mantua and in Genoa. He employed his envoy in Madrid, Adam von Dietrichstein, to the same purpose (commenting on a plan of Aranjuez which Dietrichstein sent him), as he did his officials within his own territories.36 Maximilian did not only look for inanimate objects, but also for lively talents who might contribute to the success of his undertaking. His letters to his envoy repeatedly ask them to be on the look out for good architects who might be tempted to come to Vienna. In most cases these requests have been motivated by his need to improve the defence of his lands against the Turks largely dictat- ed this initiative: most of the names that crop up in this correspondence were military engineers, of whom only a few actually arrived in Vienna. The foremost 35 Maximilian ii to Prospero d’Arco, Linz, 4 December 1568, printed in JdKS 13, 1892,2, pp. xlvii–xlviii, Regest 8805; cf. Lippmann 2006–2007, p. 162 and cited in Lietzmann 1987, p. 29 en pp. 164–165; Podewils, 1992, p. 25, n. 88; from the following correspondence it appears that Count d’Arco did indeed succeed in obtaining a number of antique statues and also commissioned some modern sculpture, some of which was explicitly intended for use in one or more fountains. On Arco’s acquisition and transport of sculptures, cf. Lietzmann 164–166; Podewils 1992, pp. 25–33. 36 ‘La tratza del jardin de aranjues dunkt mich saie nach gelegnhait des platz wol aufgetailt glaichwol kan mans also gar nit wol sehen. Sino poco mas o menos’, as given in Rudolf 1995, pp. 180–181; the relevant passage (p. 181, n. 176) gives some inkling of Maximilian’s way of thinking—in his informal letters to what was also a close personal friend he freely mixes German, Spanish and Latin—and demonstrates that he himself did critically think about the architectural aspects of gardening. Maximilian also asked the supervisors of mines in his territories to send him ‘Handsteine’ to decorate his grottoes and fountains (Lietzmann 1987, p. 70).