Page - 635 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 2

635Visual Documentation all products of Strada’s workshop, rather than remnants from his collection.14 Ottavio, on the other hand, did on various occasions attempt to sell what he presented as remnants from his father’s collection of prints and drawings. Here I will limit myself to listing these attempts and provide his descriptions, which give at least some idea of size and quality of this section of his father’s Musaeum. Ottavio’s first attempts date from shortly after Jacopo’s decease, which im- plies that they are concerned with material from his father’s collection he had already brought into his possession long before Strada made his will in 1584. In this will Ottavio was almost totally disinherited, for reasons the stating of which took three of the eight pages of the document, and of which the rape and attempted murder of his father’s ‘concubine’ is only the most shocking. One of the crimes with which Strada taxed his undutiful son is the alienation of part of his collection of drawings: Seventh, he has outright stolen, and scandalously squandered my best antique coins, called medals; and other medals, my best, that belong to the series of the Emperors; moreover my dearest, and most beautiful designs [‘Contrafectur’], drawn by hand, which I have brought together since my youngest years, and which have cost me a lot of money; as well as other things.15 It is natural that this will gave rise to litigation between Ottavio and his broth- ers and sister, which continued long after the formal opening of the will, which itself took place only on 28 September 1590, that is almost two years after Stra- da’s death. Meanwhile Strada’s studio, in Vienna, was under seal, and thus not accessible to Ottavio, who in any case was living in Prague and did not come to Vienna until the summer of 1589.16 But already on 6 December 1588 he wrote to 14 Doc. 1594-12-23. Some of these festival drawings were made by Paolo Strada himself; on Strada’s festival designs, see above, Ch. 4.3.5. 15 Doc. 1584-07-01; Appendix B. The will is discussed in greater detail below, Ch. 14.10. 16 Doc. 1584-07-01: the original of Strada’s will bears a note that it had been opened by the Landesmarschall of Lower Austria, in the presence of Ottavio and of Paolo, also as rep- resentative of his young half-brother Tobia, on 28 September 1590. In a letter to Belisario Vinta of 10 April 1590 Ottavio refers to three illustrated manuscript books in which his own patron, Emperor Rudolf ii, was interested, but which Ottavio preferred to sell to the Grand Duke (doubtless in view of Rudolf’s notorious procrastination in paying) so he had put off the Emperor by telling him that they were still in Vienna under seal (‘e molte volte S.M.C. mi da domandare de questi libri, dove sempre trovo scusa che sonno in Vienna nel studio seratij)’; in a subsequent letter of 17 June 1590 Ottavio refers to the litigation with his brother (asf, Medici del Principato 814, fol. 343; 817, fol. 72). In the end the litigation