Page - 510 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 1

Chapter 9510 most likely candidate to have guided Maximilian’s steps in the development of his project for the Neugebäude. Thus he may have suggested possible models, searched for additional documentation in his own collection or tried to obtain it through his contacts in the book- and print trade, and he may have provided an appreciative but critical sounding board for the Emperor’s ideas. Subsequently Strada was one of the professionals charged to translate the Emperor’s ideas into workable designs. His Antiquarium designs give an im- pression of what such drawings may have looked like. Then he may have dis- cussed these with the masters charged with the execution of the project in order to ensure that they well understood the Emperor’s wishes. This means that, as an agent of his patron, he may have instructed and to some extent su- pervised the Imperial architects, the master-masons and other contractors—a task that would fall well within the scope of his function as a courtier and a court-antiquary, and for which his ample knowledge and exclusive experience coupled to his formal appointment as an Imperial architect gave him sufficient authority. But there are no indications that he ever directly managed or even supervised the masons, carpenters and gardeners doing the actual work. This may have been different for the decoration of the complex. Not much is known about the decoration of the Neugebäude, and in any case very little was completed at the time of Maximilian’s death.118 Strada’s humanist erudi- tion coupled to his practical artistic expertise made him the ideal intermediary to develop decorative programmes, to select suitable artists and to supervise their work, in the same way as he helped organize and direct the team of artists that prepared the costumes for the tournament organized in Pressburg on the occasion of the coronation of Archduke Rudolf as King of Hungary in 1572.119 Strada’s acquaintance and sometime close connections with many artists, par- ticularly in Venice but also in Mantua, in Nuremberg, and in Vienna itself, point in this direction, as does the fact that he himself employed numbers of artists: scribes, miniaturists and draughtsmen working on his libri di disegni, engravers such as Martino Rota and Jost Amman preparing the illustrations for the publi- cations he planned, sculptors restoring the antique sculptures bought for Duke Albrecht v of Bavaria and stonecutters incising the black marble plaques iden- tifying these.120 He probably also owned a small goldsmith’s workshop where he could occasionally practice this craft in so far as it related to his numismatic 118 Aspects of the decoration and furnishing of the Neugebäude will be included in my planned, more detailed analysis of the Neugebäude project. 119 Cf. above, Ch. 4.3.4. 120 Cf. below, Ch. 12.3.2.