Page - 592 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 2

Chapter ��59� expected to provide the master plan underlying the eventual collocation of Albrecht’s acquisitions within the Antiquarium.41 Summing up it appears that, though he certainly was well paid for his en- deavours, when antiquities were involved Strada’s activities in Venice cannot really be compared with those of a modern art dealer. They have much more in common with the tasks of the professional curator of a large museum. 12.4 Strada’s Own Cabinet of Antiquities 12.4.1 The Cabinet as Shown in the Portrait The Italian collections that provided the antiquities Strada acquired first for Fugger and then for Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria also provided him with the objects he brought together in his own cabinet or Musaeum, though he prob- ably had begun collecting these much earlier, perhaps as early as in Rome in the 1530s, and he must have made use of opportunities he encountered on his travels, for instance in Lyon. Except for his collection of ancient coins, which he always mentions separately, and which can be partially reconstructed on the basis of his own descriptions in his manuscript Διαςκευέ, we have hardly any positive evidence about the antiquarian contents of his Musaeum, except that it existed. Doubtless it included at least some marbles, some small antique bronzes and other objects, such as the antiquities Strada is showing off so en- thusiastically in his portrait by Titian. Though these may be chiefly intended to refer to the acquisitions for Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria in which Strada was en- gaged at that time, they are representative for the type of objects he was partic- ularly interested in and must have bought for himself, and which were intended either for his own collection or in order to sell to some of his other patrons, or both. The principal object represented is the small marble version of a Venus which Strada extends to the viewer [Fig. 12.9]. It is reminiscent of a type tradi- tionally associated with the Aphrodite Pselioumene mentioned by Pliny among the works of Praxiteles, but represents either a probably contemporary varia- tion of that statue or—more likely—a fruit of Titian’s fertile imagination.42 A small male torso in white marble and a small female draped figure in bronze 41 Discussed above, Ch. 8. 42 Panofsky 1969, p. 81, following Klein 1899, pp. 60–62, who duly notes the divergence from the type; cf. Heenes 2010, p. 286, n. 4. Krahn 2008 suggests that the statuette is a version of a lost antique torso, one among the antiquities bought for Duke Albrecht which Strada had restored by Alessandro Vittoria.