Page - 631 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 2

631Visual Documentation the High Renaissance. During his stay in Lyon he could buy both the manu- scripts of the architectural treatise of Sebastiano Serlio, and the collection of drawings he had brought together during his long life. When he subsequently arrived in Rome he likewise purchased the entire paper inheritance of his old friend Perino del Vaga, which included both Perino’s own drawings and many of other artists, including Raphael, who had been his teacher. On his way back to Germany Strada visited his hometown, Mantua, and persuaded Giulio Romano’s feckless son Raffaello—named after Perino’s and Giulio’s common master—to part with all the drawings he had inherited from his father. In the preface to his edition of Serlio’s Settimo Libro Strada provides a glowing ac- count of these acquisitions, of which he was very proud. Strada makes clear that these artists had collected not only their own works, but also that of their masters and of other artists, and also of other regions. For instance both Serlio’s collection—where one would expect it—and Perino’s—where it would be less obvious—included architectural drawings from France.2 Strada, in his pride of his Musaeum, might easily have overestimated the importance of his acquisitions. Therefore it is fortunate that his enthusiastic account is partly corroborated by a passage in Giovanni Battista Armenini’s De veri precetti della pittura. As a young painter, just arrived in Rome from his native Ravenna, Armenini was employed by Strada as a draughtsman. Living in the latter’s house in Rome, he was allowed to study the drawings from Perino’s estate at leisure. He also makes clear that Strada was quite open handed and paid high prices for the things he valued, and stresses that Strada paid ‘real- mente’ for his commissions.3 Strada’s strong financial position, coupled with his obstinacy and perfectionism, suggest that he did not greatly exaggerate when he claimed to have acquired not only Serlio’s entire collection, but also all of Perino’s and Giulio Romano’s graphic material that remained in the pos- session of their heirs—to the effect that <…>those expert in the arts can well judge how many beautiful things I have, having obtained the labours of three such great men.4 2 Serlio 1575, preface, fol. a iiii-r.: ‘Fra questi disegni [= Perino’s drawings] ne trovai una grandis- sima quantità d’Architettura, tanto di quegli di Roma, quanto di Francia, et altri luochi della Italia’. 3 Armenini 1587, p. 180; ibid., pp. 64–65, states that Strada paid Catarina Penni fifty scudi for her husband’s drawings. Is this the first sale of master drawings of which the price has come down to us? It seems a rather modest sum in view of what the purchase included; but Arme- nini may have witnessed the payment of one instalment of a cumulatively much larger sum. 4 Serlio 1575, preface, fol. a iiii-r.: ‘<…>a tale, che quelli de l’arte possono far giudicio quante belle cose mi truovo: havendo di tre tanto grand’ huomini havuto le fatiche’.