Page - 629 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 2

©  dirk jacob jansen, ���9  |  doi:�0.��63/9789004359499_0�5 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the prevailing cc-by-nc-nd License. Chapter 13 Books, Prints and Drawings: The Musaeum as a Centre of Visual Documentation 13.1 Introduction It should be noted that in Strada’s own descriptions of his Musaeum quoted at the beginning of the last chapter, contemporary works of art—paintings—are mentioned only twice and only in passing. Either they seem to have been of less importance to Strada than his medals, his antiquities, his books and his rare manuscripts, or they did not fit his perception of the preferences of the particular patrons addressed. In these descriptions he never refers to the prints and drawings in his collection, though from other sources we know that those in fact constituted a very substantial part of his holdings. Moreover they consti- tuted the part which appears to have been of the greatest immediate practical use—many examples of this have been advanced in Part ii of this study—and which was most explicitly exploited in Strada’s own projects, such as the libri di disegni he prepared for his patrons and his projected publications. In view of the size and importance of his holdings an analysis of the available informa- tion is useful, not only for the light it throws on Strada’s preferences and pro- cedures, but also for the history of the collecting of drawings in general. After his death his collection must have been one of the major sources tapped by the better documented collectors of the seventeenth century—apart from Rudolf ii one thinks of Paul von Praun, Lord Arundel, Cassiano dal Pozzo and so on. The list of ‘Pleasant canvases’ and other objects Strada offered to the Duke of Bavaria sometime in the 1570s includes a few works on paper which have not yet been mentioned in the preceding chapter. They are described as follows: 5 books of various sorts of good engraved works of art 1 small chest, in it many large and small works of art engraved in copper by many masters and made by hand: 1 big book, Cosmographia and many fortresses 1 book about architecture.1 1 Cf. Appendix C; cf. Stockbauer 1874, p. 44. Note that the latter two items may possibly have been albums of prints (and drawings), instead of illustrated publications.