Page - 462 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 1

Chapter 9462 the classical and contemporary literature he read, and not least the discussions with the scholars and artists who, with some congenial spirits among the court nobility, made up what has been called Maximilian’s Hofakademie.46 This is very much the same soil from which sprouted the themes, the texts, the iconography and the designs for the courtly festivities that occasionally were organized at court; before his accession some of these had been directed by Maximilian himself. The Neugebäude was the result of a similar collective effort as was needed to organize such representative triumphs. Just as the physical components of the building were carried to Vienna from all over Maximilian’s territories, and its contents arrived from all over Europe and beyond, so the ideas informing its conception and the visual forms chosen to realize this had very heterogeneous origins. As in the creation of the Prater Lusthaus, many of these ideas and forms must have been provided by the intellectuals and artists at Maximilian’s court, but unlike the Prater, which is so well documented in Tanner’s treatise, their individual contributions cannot be attributed with any certainty. What is certain is that such heterogeneous ideas and forms were combined in quite unusual ways, and it is the resulting eclectic mixture which gives the Neugebäude its very individual, even eccentric character, and provides the strongest argument to attribute the final responsibility of its concept, its over- all design and even many of its details to its patron himself, rather than to any one hypothetical master designer. A detailed analysis of these various ele- ments and their sources is indispensable for a better comprehension of this ex- ceptional work of art, its purpose and its patron’s intentions. It might moreover help to tentatively attribute the responsibility for some of its individual fea- tures to plausible candidates. Because such an analysis would amply transcend the limits of this study, here I will discuss only those features of the complex and their probable sources when these can be connected with Jacopo Strada and the materials in his Musaeum.47 Strada contributed to the development of the Neugebäude in two ways. In the first place he contributed a least one concrete design, either for the gen- eral lay-out of the project, or for one or more of its individual components. 46 This term, first used in connection with Maximilian in Aschbach’s history of Vienna University, should not be taken too seriously: it merely indicates the presence of a large number of learned men connected with Maximilian’s court, who doubtless regularly exchanged information, ideas and opinions; but there is no evidence that this happened in any institutional setting (other than Maximilian’s Kammer and the University); cf. Aschbach 1888, p. 349; Mühlberger 1992, p. 212, n. 35; Almási 2009, p. 99. 47 A first attempt published in my contribution to Looking for Leisure, the Palatium Collo- quium in Prague in 2014: Jansen 2017.