Page - 495 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 1

495The Neugebäude 9.10.3 Palazzo del Principe in Genoa and the Villa Gonzaga in Milan Maximilian never visited Rome, and had seen very little of Italy. He did, how- ever, know three important monuments of the Italian High Renaissance at first hand, two of which have been mentioned in connection with the Neugebäude. The first of these is the Palazzo Doria at Fassolo, a villa suburbana built on the shore of the Mediterranean, just outside the city walls of Genoa, for Andrea Doria, virtual prince of that maritime republic: the villa’s more common name is Palazzo del Principe [Figs. 9.88–9.89]. As we have seen above, Maximilian visited Genoa four times, in his trips to Spain and back again in 1548, 1550 and 1551. On each occasion Andrea Doria, as Imperial Admiral, was charged to ar- range and safeguard the passage to and from Barcelona of the young King and his suite, and it was natural that he would offer his hospitality while await- ing a favourable wind. It was here that, in July 1548, Maximilian first saw the Mediterranean, and it was here that, in November 1551, he spent a week with his beloved wife, his young family, and the elephant he had been given by the King of Portugal. So it is not impossible that memories of this spot played a role when he was shaping his own villa suburbana.96 The typological similarity between the Palazzo del Principe and the Neuge- bäude is striking: both complexes are centred upon extremely elongated build- ings, in itself a quite unusual concept at the time. Both of these buildings are provided with arcaded promenades opening towards an ample view, over the Mediterranean at Genoa, towards the Danube in Vienna. Both are placed 96 Renate Wagner Rieger was the first to suggest a link between the Palazzo Doria and the Neugebäude, an intuition ignored by Lietzmann in her 1987 monography, but taken up by Lippmann 2006–2007, p. 155. On the Palazzo del Principe, see Stagno 2005. The coupled columns of the logge on both end facades cannot have influenced the Neugebäude, because they date from the extension of the villa under Giovan Andrea Doria in the late sixteenth century (Gorse 1985–1986, p. 35, n. 97). Figures 9.88–9.89 The Palazzo del Principe in Genoa, built for Andrea Doria, seen from the South, in prints dating from the early and mid- eighteenth century.