Page - 624 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 2

Chapter ��6�4 anonymous portraits depicting contemporary artists, Michelangelo, Bandinel- li, Andrea del Sarto and Titian, which implies Strada’s conscious admiration for these great masters of the Italian Renaissance. A portrait of Virgil, Mantua’s most illustrious son, by ‘Licinio’, reflects Strada’s patriot pride as well as his love for classical poetry and learning: most likely it was an explicit commission from Strada’s Vienna colleague, Giulio Licinio, rather than an existing painting by Giovanni Antonio da Pordenone or Bernardino Licinio he had chanced to pick up. Most interesting is a painting attributed to Titian that is explicitly indicated as ‘old’. It was a ‘Tafel’, a panel instead of a canvas, was set in a gilt frame and represented Judith and Holofernes. Possibly it was (a version of?) the Salome with the head of St John the Baptist now in the Galleria Doria-Pamphilj in Rome [Fig. 12.41]. The term ‘old’ here implies that it was no recent work, that it looked ‘old-fashioned’, so it must have been an early work of Titian, from the same period as the one other painting in the list that is described as old, ‘an old pic- ture made by Giorgio da Castelfranco, with two figures’. It is very tempting to identify the latter painting with Giorgione’s Two figures in a Landscape in the National Gallery in London, also known as Il tramonto [Fig. 12.43].100 In contrast to these ‘old’ paintings are two paintings that must have been quite new, since they were by Niccolò Frangipane, one of the lesser gifted pu- pils of Titian: a small picture of the Judgment of Paris and a picture of ‘einer Musica’. The latter was a specialism of Frangipane, and it is tempting to iden- tify this particular one with the large Satire on the performance of a madrigal, in a private collection in Belgium or with one of various other versions which have appeared in the market recently.101 [Fig. 12.44] The madrigal in question, Bella guerriera mia, on a text from Pietro Bembo’s Rime, set to music by Or- lando di Lasso, is completely readable in the painting. Of course Lasso was the musical superstar of his generation, and his work was constantly reprinted; nevertheless, as Duke Albrecht’s court composer he was a personal acquain- tance of both Strada and Stopio (who provided the text for one of his motets) and repeatedly visited Venice himself. A painting such as this may well have been inspired by these Bavarian connections, even if it was not explicitly com- missioned for a Bavarian patron. 100 Inv. nr. ng 6307. The figures have been interpreted as St Roch having his leg bound by St Gothardus; the St George fighting the dragon in the middle ground of this painting is a nineteenth-century addition. 101 It was the subject of a fascinating article by Bert Meijer (Meijer 1972–193), who also re- constructed Frangipane’s biography (Meijer 1972). Other versions of this painting were included in the catalogues of sales at Munich (Hampel, 2009-06-26), London (Christie’s, 2015-04-30) and Vienna (Dorotheum, 2916-10-18).