Page - 527 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 1

527Other Patrons of Architecture not executed in stucco but in terracotta pressed into a mould, while other ele- ments are actually in wood, metal and glass.16 These are techniques that were used in the ephemeral decorations made, for instance, for the triumphal en- try of Rudolf ii in Vienna in 1577, which are described in Van Mander’s life of Bartholomaeus Spranger, who together with Hans Mont was responsible for them.17 It has been plausibly suggested that the decoration of these rooms more or less reflects the decoration prepared by Spranger, Hans Mont and Giulio Licinio in Maximilian ii’s Neugebäude, and that Hans Mont may therefore be held responsible for the sculptural parts of the decoration at Bučovice. It seems very likely indeed that Strada, asked to devise the decoration of these rooms, would have fallen back on one or more of the artists he knew person- ally as close colleagues in Vienna, and with whom he probably had collabo- rated both at the Neugebäude and in one or more of the festivities organized at court. Given his presence at Bučovice for several months just at the time these decorations were realized, I think it is safe to assume that he had been charged with organizing and supervising the decoration of this cycle of rooms, which probably was intended to serve as its patron’s studiolo and to house his library and collections. On the basis of the particular theme and its style, I am also inclined to attribute the design of the Imperial Chamber to him.18 Strada’s presence at Bučovice at the time these decorations were executed obviously also raises the question whether he may earlier have had some role in the design of the castle itself. In her monograph on the Neugebäude Hilda Lietzmann was the first to propose him as its architect, instead of Ferrabosco, 16 She cites an unpublished restoration report of 1952, and investigated the room herself with specialist assistance (Vacková 1979, pp. 241–242). 17 Van Mander 1604, fol. 272r. ‘Hier toe maeckte hy oock eenighe groote beelden van acht oft neghen voeten hoogh, eerst opgheraemt van hort hoy ghebonden, en daer nae met pot-eerde <…>, alle de beelden van aerde wesende, werden geschildert wit van Oly-verwe, datse glans hadden als witten Marber’. 18 A general survey of the decoration in Krčalová 1969, pp. 190–192; on the Imperial Cham- ber, see Royt 1997. These rooms merit a more detailed investigation, also as to their re- markable iconography and its sources: the Chamber of the Five Senses appears to be based on a set of 1581 prints by Raphael Sadeler after Martin de Vos; the Chamber of the Birds uses princely emblems such as those later printed in Ottavio Strada’s Symbola; the Cham- ber of the Hares is probably inspired by a cycle painted a few years earlier by Heinrich Krönung in the Hasensaal, the principal reception room of the Augustusburg, a splendid Renaissance hunting residence built by the Elector August of Saxony only a few years earlier, which itself was based on Georg Pencz’ woodcut to a poem by Hans Sachs, printed already in 1535.