Page - 580 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 2

Chapter ��580 his house and collection in order to obtain the funds to finish his Dictionary and other publishing projects, going even so far as to try and make a lottery of it. All these efforts were wasted, for in his last will of 1583 he again determines that after his death the collection should be presented to some unspecified patron, and part of the proceeds used to finance the printing of his books.6 Though slightly varying according to their addressee, these three letters basically conform in their description of Strada’s collection. This consisted of three principal components: a collection of antiquities, a collection of con- temporary works of art, and a library. Neither the inventories Strada appears to have made in his lifetime, for his own use and that of his patrons, nor the settlement agreed among his heirs after his death have been preserved.7 To get a hint of the contents of the various sections we have to rely on the sparse concrete data provided by disparate contemporary and slightly later sources— chief among these the documents preserved in Munich relating to Strada’s acquisitions for Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria. These will be the subject of the following paragraph. 12.3 Strada’s Acquisitions for Duke Albrecht v of Bavaria Whereas Strada’s role as an architect has been referred to only very casually in earlier literature, reason why it was treated more extensively in the preced- ing chapters, his role as an agent or merchant of works of art in general, and of classical antiquities in particular, has always been considered a central ele- ment in his career. There can be no doubt that Strada himself considered it as such, witness the great pride with which, in the dedication to Duke Albrecht V of his edition of Caesar’s Commentaries (Frankfurt 1575), he described his acquisition—on behalf of Hans Jakob Fugger and the Duke himself—of the huge collection of classical statuary that filled the Munich Antiquarium: 6 ‘Doc 1584-07-01; discussed in greater detail below, Ch. 14.9. I have found no indication to which patron Strada referred with the term ‘Bewissten Ort’. 7 Strada refers to an inventory in his letter to Vilém z Rožmberka (Doc. 1573-12-18): ‘Euer Gnaden weren ein Inventari haben von meiner Liberay unndt Kunstkhamer, die ich Dero geben hab, wie Sie in meinem Haus gebesen sent, damals Euer Gnaden on mich begertt hatt; unndt Sich darinnen wol wissen zu erinnern, in was Gelt ichs Euer Gnaden ongeslagen hab’. But when he offered his Kunstkammer to August of Saxony (Doc. 1575-09-28) he had no up- to-date inventory available: ‘Ich hett darneben Eur C.F.G. gern ein Inventari der picher als wol der antiquitethen ges[c]higt, so ist es des dings so fil, das mir die zeitt zu kurz ist worden’. The copy of Strada’s testament preserved in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek carries an annotation ‘die Vergleichung der Bruedern und Schwestern vide in S’—unfortunately that document has not been preserved. The testament was opened only on September 28, 1590, a year and a half after Strada’s death.