Page - 559 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 2

559Strada’s Circle This suggests a cordial relationship between the two men and may imply that the Bishop even had visited Strada at home. At this time this was not yet the huge house in the Vordere Schenkengasse, but a smaller one Strada must have acquired when he first arrived in Vienna, probably identical with the house in the suburb of St Ulrich he possessed and lived in when he drafted his last will in 1584.23 On the other hand it is not likely that such relations with a prelate and am- bassador can have been quite as intimate as those with Jacopo Dani, whose status as secretary to the ambassador was probably closer to Strada’s own. The letter does suggest a patronage relationship, since Strada rather ambiguously offers to continue his services to Bochetel, provided that the latter were satis- fied with them.24 But it is not clear whether these services were rendered in his capacity as a learned antiquary, as a bookseller and purveyor of antiquities and works of art, or purely as a merchant and commercial agent, assisting the ambassador in arranging the financial details of his mission. That the latter option is not impossible is indicated by the fact that Strada at one time was approached for a huge loan by the Papal Nuncio, Zaccaria Dolfin, which he de- cided to refuse. Strada himself later suspected that this refusal had prompted Dolfin to denounce him to the Inquisition, thus causing the big trouble he was in during his visit to Mantua in the summer of 1567.25 In fact it may well be that both types of services intermingled. The Nieri or Neri mentioned in Strada’s letter to Bochetel of 1562, resident in Nuremberg, were succesful merchants from Lucca resident in Nuremberg. Francesco Nieri is mentioned in Ottavio Strada’s letter to his father from Nuremberg in Decem- ber 1574, and Strada’s last will mentions ‘Paulinuss Nijeri von Lucca’ as ‘meiner Gefährte’, who seems to have functioned as banker for Strada and his ‘Genos- sen’: both words are translations of the Italian ‘compagno’, which suggests that they were regular business associates.26 Doubtless Strada was not a merchant 23 Cf. above, Ch. 7. 24 Doc 1562-10-21: ‘Dessidero che la Signoria Vostra Reverendissima mi faccia favore di farmi avisare se avera riceputo li detti danari et se crede di ritornare più in queste nostre bande come sua Maestà Cesarea viene; che per la parte mia La voria pur ancor servire qual che anno, ma che fosse con Sua sadiffatione <sic>’. 25 Doc. 1568-00-00, Strada’s undated draft for a letter to an unnamed fellow refugee from the Mantuan Inquisition: ‘Ma poi che voi cominciate a cantare, dite tutto l’historia, e dite come il Delfino Cardinale [patriarca crossed out, corrected into: essendo Vescovo], non gli volendo prestar mille <duca>ti, ne tampoco farla sigurtà, esso à fatto questo ufitio; ma ancora lui è conossiuto.’ Dolfin was created a cardinal after his return from the Imperial court in 1565, where he spent four years. 26 Docs. 1562-10-21, 1574-12-05, 1584-07-01. I have not been able to find anything concrete about the Frankfurt branch of the Nieri; like many expatriate Lucchese merchants elsewhere in Europe, they may well have been Protestants.