Page - 582 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 2

Chapter ��58� Flemish poet and erudite Niccolò Stopio.11 Stopio’s regular reports provide a lively, though rather one-sided impression of Strada’s occupations during his sojourns in Venice, and it will therefore be useful briefly to sketch the context of this correspondence. Though a native of Aalst, in the Southern Netherlands, Stopio had been resi- dent in Venice for at least twenty years.12 He provided Hans Jakob Fugger with weekly news bulletins, in the spirit of the Fuggerzeitungen, and forwarded Fug- ger’s correspondence to Bologna, Florence and Rome. He also purveyed books and manuscripts—in particular manuscripts from Greece, relatively easy to come by in Venice—and various luxury goods, such as gloves, soaps, and even medicines made after his own recipes. His real speciality seems to have been music: he not only sent instruments, but also contracted musicians and instru- ment makers for the Bavarian court.13 And as a neo-Latin poet, he wrote texts for Orlando di Lasso—such as the motet Gratia Sola Dei sung at the wedding, in 1568, of Prince Wilhelm of Bavaria to Renée of Lorraine—and for other com- posers at the Bavarian court. Thus he provided a laudatory poem on Duchess Anna that was set to five voices for the same occasion by Caterina, the gifted daughter of Adriaen Willaert.14 Though obviously neither wealthy nor partic- ularly illustrious, he appears to have been respected as a man of letters, and to have been at least acquainted with most of Venice’s leading artists and literati. Yet it is clear that he strongly resented the contrast between his position and that of Strada, whom he claimed to have known in different circumstances many years earlier. 11 BHStA-LA 4851, 4852 (Stopio’s correspondence) and 4853. 12 On Stopio, see Von Busch 1973, pp. 116, n. 48. The Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan preserves some of his poems in manuscript (Iter Italicum i, 1965, pp. 287, 302, 307). He provided all manner of services and goods, such as books, but also cosmetics and medicines, cf. BHStA-LA 4852, ff. 58, 49, 245 and 215: ‘Mando con quella un libro delle cose di Carolo V, et un libretto del viaggio di Terra Santa, et doi pezzetti di sapone, biancho et verdetto<…>’. 13 These musicians were not always eager to remain in Germany: ‘<…>ma sopratutto com- prendo che quel paese non fa per questi musici d’Italia, che sono tutti teste leggiere, et sono usi di stare con le loro compagne et putane, che è il loro Paradiso, a tal che partendo d’Italia pare che vadino al Purgatorio<…>et così quando uno vi è, cerca di persuadere al compagno chel ci venghi, poi concludono a non volervi stare ne l’uno ne l’altro<…>’, ibid., ff. 71–72; on musical instruments, ibid. f. 64. 14 ‘Gratia sola Dei pie in omnibus in omnia adimplet’, in: Peter Bergquist [ed.], Orlando Di Lasso: The Complete Motets, 7, Madison (wi) 1998, p. xvii and p. xxvii (its text and an English translation). On Caterina Willaert’s madrigal, see Massimo Troiano, Dialoghi<…> ne’ quali si narrano le cose piu notabili fatte nelle nozze dello illustriss. et eccell. prencipe Guglielmo vi., conte palatino del Reno, e duca di Baviera; e dell’ illustriss. et eccell. madama Renata di Loreno, Venice 1569, fols. 123v–124v.