Page - 625 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 2

6�5The Musaeum: Its Contents Figure ��.43 Giorgione, Il tramonto; London, National Gallery. Figure ��.44 Niccolò Frangipane, Satire on the performance of a madrigal, private collection. 12.7.4 The ‘Kunstkasten’ and Other Kunstkammer Items Though the heading of the list refers to paintings only, in fact it continues with a quantity of miscellaneous items of antiquarian and artistic character and a few typical Kunstkammer objects. The first object mentioned is the ‘schöner kasten von einglegten holz’, mentioned earlier: this was an intarsia cabinet or Kunstschrank, decorated and filled with small antique sculptures or fragments. Principal items were the portrait heads of Philip of Macedon, of his son Alex- ander the Great and of Hannibal; a female head identified as ‘Capuana’; and the small heads of ‘two children, one of whom laughs, the other cries’, all in marble. The cabinet moreover contained a number of other small antiquities: a bust of Faustina in marble, and one of Minerva in ‘metal’, probably bronze, as were the statuettes of Apollo, a male and a female Satyr and two horses. Two ‘Piramiden von Marmor’ were probably marble obelisks topping the cabinet. It has been noted above that the presence in this Kunstschrank of the heads of the crying and laughing children relates this list to the earlier inventory of the Bussoni collection, which is likewise preserved in Munich and can be as- sociated with Strada. This strongly suggests that it was Strada himself who had bought these sculptures and then commissioned this sumptuous piece of fur- niture to house some of the smaller antiques he had acquired. This ‘Kasten’ must have been similar in intention—though not quite in size and splendour—to the Stipo Farnese, constructed in 1578–1579 to house the smaller antiquities collected by Strada’s old patron, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, after a concept of Strada’s colleague, the learned antiquary and his- torian Fulvio Orsini [Fig. 12.45].102 Another example was the splendid cabinet designed by Francesco Capriani da Volterra in which Cesare Gonzaga housed 102 Ecouen, Musée National de la Renaissance; cf. Fornari Schianchi/Spinosa 1995, pp. 56–57.