Page - 500 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 1

Chapter 9500 own complex, though the form these would take was derived from those at the Villa Madama, as we have already seen.104 9.11 Strada’s Contribution This summing up of possible sources confirms Hilda Lietzmann’s observation that the design of the Neugebäude was not based on one or even a few indi- vidual models. On the contrary, it is eclectic, merging many disparate elements into what is in fact a quite extraordinary and rather original creation. Much of the material documenting such models was already in print, and could have been available at court through other channels than Jacopo Strada. So there is no positive evidence indicating which particular features he may have con- tributed to the design of the Neugebäude. Nevertheless it seems quite likely that Maximilian, his advisers and the architects who had to execute the work- ing-drawings for the building had made ample use of the material in Strada’s collection: as an Imperial Architect and Antiquary he could be expected to make the relevant documentation available to his patron and his colleagues. Moreover, as none other—except possibly Sallustio Peruzzi—he could explain and comment on this material, on the basis of his expertise and his first-hand acquaintance with many of the monuments illustrated. Of course the use of material from Strada’s Musaeum by no means allows the conclusion that Strada would have been responsible for all or most of the designs for the complex and its various elements; but neither does it exclude that possibility. The only concrete evidence which links Strada with the design of the Neugebäude is the Fugger letter cited at the beginning of this chapter. From its date and its wording it can be concluded that Strada either made a design or a plan for the lay-out as a whole, work on which would begin shortly afterwards, or that he made a first design for the principal building planned in it. The latter option may be the most likely. If so, we don’t know what this design looked like, but the results of the excavations in the 1980s indicate that it may have consisted of a complex of three separate pavilions, rather than one huge and monumental block. The planning of the project as a whole probably 104 Those at the Palazzo del Te were themselves perhaps influenced by those at the Villa Mad- ama, where Giulio had assisted Raphael; peschiere appear to have been a standard feature of Italian villa’s, as Maximilian saw them also at the Villa Gonzaga at Milan. Moreover, pi- sciculture as such was widely known also in his own territories, especially in Bohemia: the powerful Rožmberk family derived a very substantial part of their revenue from it, and already in the fifteenth century had had dug the fishpond called Rožmberk near Třeboň, for long the largest artificial lake in Europe.