Page - 590 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 2

Chapter ��590 For such big acquisitions Strada relied upon the assistance of certain middle- men or ‘Unterkäufer’ (literally ‘under-buyers’) to assist him in his negotiations. Of the sensali, officially authorized valuers and brokers who were involved in the estimate of the Loredan collection, the knowledgeable Giovanni Battista Mondella seems to have been his most trusted adviser. Strada had got to know him during his visit of 1560, when Mondella had acted as an intermediary when he acquired three statues from the Loredan collection.36 On the other hand it should be noted that Strada appears to have advanced part of the capital needed to pay for the acquisitions (excluding the Loredan collection, which was paid for directly through the Duke’s commercial agent) and to cover various incidental expenses, as is clear from the account he later handed in. He did moreover occasionally buy antiquities on his own account: perhaps for some other, unidentified patrons, perhaps for his own collection. But it is not clear whether—apart from his own, private studio—he deliber- ately collected a large stock of ancient sculpture and other relics of Antiquity explicitly intended to supply potential customers such as Albrecht v at will; that is, whether he set up as a merchant of art on a grand scale. Apart from the acquisitions themselves, Strada also occupied himself with other necessary activities in connection with the Duke’s collection of antiqui- ties. While still in Venice he already looked after the restoration of some of the sculptures, and he proposed that part of the Loredan marbles should be sent to Munich by way of Vienna, a considerable detour, where he intended to have them restored in his own studio and under his own direct supervision, as had been done with some of the statues from Rome.37 In Venice he ordered tab- lets in black marble or ‘pietra di paragone’ to be used for the inscriptions that were intended to be placed in the pedestals of the various statues. This was very critical work because the customary abbreviations in the Latin inscrip- tions could easily be garbled by unlettered stonecutters. Strada later insisted that it was necessary to have them made under his direct supervision, because even the few test examples he had had made in Venice by a first class master 36 Von Busch 1973, p. 118 and p. 291, n. 60 and 292, n. 64. Strada made use of Mondella also on other occasions, and employed him as his agent when he was absent from Venice. At Strada’s request Duke Albrecht provided Mondella with a ‘fede’, a formal letter of rec- ommendation, see BHStA, Kurbayern, A.A. 4853 [= la 3], fols. 13, 83, 122 and 185. Foreign merchants in Venice were more or less obliged to uses such brokers in their dealings (cf. Welch 2005, pp. 33 ff.). 37 Von Busch 1973, p. 207; BHStA, Kurbayern, A.A. 4851 [= la 2], fols. 309, 310 and 314. Some of the restorations were done in Venice by Alessandro Vittoria. The Duke declined Strada’s offer, because he did not trust the statues to go to Vienna, considering Maximilian ii a se- rious rival in the collecting of antique statuary.