Page - 507 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 1

507The Neugebäude supporting a stucco bugnato finish, as was the habitual technique in Mantua, and is suggested in Strada’s design for the Antiquarium. Perhaps a stucco ren- dering decorated with sgrafitto grotesques such as those of Bonifaz Wolmut’s Prague Ballhaus was intended; if so, it was never executed.111 9.12 Conclusion: Strada’s Role in the Design of the Neugebäude Apart from Strada many other architects at court must also have contributed to the development of the Neugebäude project, in any case the architects or master-masons who were charged to supervise its actual construction. Had Strada been its sole designer he would probably have mentioned it some- where, for instance in his preface to his 1575 edition of Serlio’s Settimo Libro.112 Above I have already listed the arguments for the hypothesis that Maximilian himself closely supervised the designing process, regularly communicating his ideas and his wishes to his collaborators. The conception of the Neugebäude presupposes a wide and profound study of an ample range of technical, artistic and literary sources and models. Even if Maximilian did not himself commit his ideas to paper, there is a real possibility that he can be considered the auc- tor intellectualis of the Neugebäude to a greater extent than was habitual for a patron of his rank. The idiosyncrasies of the Neugebäude would hardly have been proposed to a patron by a professional architect: at the very least they presuppose some consultation between designer and patron, resulting in the first sketches and drafts of the general lay-out and the most salient components of the building. But the definitive designs, as well as the working-drawings for the building-site derived from these, may have been drawn by the architects and/or the master masons charged with the execution of the several elements. Here Ferrabosco seems to be the principal candidate, because he is documented in connec- tion with the Neugebäude, because he was more often engaged in civil (as opposed to military) projects at the Imperial court than other architects work- ing there, and because he can have been expected to better understand the Emperor’s artistic ambitions than most of his German colleagues. Moreover it was Ferrabosco who was asked to come and report to Rudolf ii on the project 111 This is understandable, since the building was never really finished; the south front does show traces of an original, very thin layer of stucco covering the brick, too thin for a sgraffito decoration, probably applied merely to protect the brickwork and to give it a pleasingly smooth appearance (Wehdorn 2004, pp. 54–55). 112 He did refer to his participation in the Munich Antiquarium in his dedication to Albrecht v of his edition of Caesaer’s Commentaries of the same year.