Page - 586 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 2

Chapter ��586 bronzes and some miscellaneous objects. At 390 ducats for the lot, this was a relatively modest acquisition, as was, at 100 ducats, the lot of two statues, a bust and a sarcophagus he could buy from the heirs of Cardinal Pietro Bembo. While still in Venice Strada had one of Zeno’s torsos completed with a head and an arm.25 His third trip to Venice, in 1569, was made in order to negotiate the purchase of two numismatic collections, respectively belonging to Giulio Calestano of Milan and to Marco Mantova Benavides of Padua, and of a col- lection of cameos and antique intaglios.26 At the same time Strada remained on the alert for further items of potential interest to Albrecht V, whom he pro- vided with annotated inventories of available collections, and to whom he sig- nalled individual pieces, such as the antique sculptures he saw in the house of Giulio Romano in Mantua and in the studio of the sculptor Alessandro Vit- toria, in Venice.27 Two statues still in the Antiquarium that can be identified with items Strada had bought in Rome can serve as examples of his acquisitions. One is a Diana of Ephesus, described in a list of the statues sent to Munich in the summer of 1567 as: A statue of Diane of the Ephesians, all intact and the figure decorated with histories, its head and hands are of black stone called ‘paragona’, and the statue is in white marble. This is as good as any of the best things found in Rome.28 [Fig. 12.1] It was famous in its time, being drawn by Etienne du Pérac and Stephanus Vi- nandus Pighius as well as by Strada himself, who included it in his Statuarum antiquarum, an album of drawings from his workshop illustrating antique 25 On the Vendramin collection: BHStA-LA 4851, fols. 195 and 316; cf. Anderson 1979; on the collection Zeno: BHStA-LA 4853, fol. 132–15v. The works Strada acquired from the Zeno and Bembo collections are listed in the final account he presented to the Duke, BHStA-LA 4853, fols. 11–21, published in Stockbauer 1874, pp. 32–36; Weski/Frosien-Leinz 1987, Text- band, p. 464, nr. 109. On Pietro Cardinal Bembo’s collection, see Eiche 1982, pp. 352–359. 26 BHStA-LA 4853, fol. 11. On the collection of Marco Mantova Benavides, see Favaretto 1972 and Candida 1967; Dacos 1969. 27 BHStA-LA 4853, fols. 11 and 27; Stockbauer 1874, p. 31. 28 BHStA-LA 4851, fol. 283 r/v (nr. 09): ‘Una statua di Diana Efesia, tutta integra e tutta historiata la figura, la sua testa le mani e li piedi son di pietra negra cioe di paragone, e la statua sie di marmor bianco, questa sta al pari delle piu belle cose che sia in roma’. It is now interpreted as an Aphrodite of Aphrodisias; otherwise than Strada thought (or wished to communicate?) its face, hands (lost) and feet in black marble were contem- porary restorations; cf. Weski/Frosien-Leinz 1987, Textband, pp. 312–313, cat. nr. 192 and pp. 428, cat. nr. 341.