Page - 641 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 2

641Visual Documentation to the volume of Dürer prints. Ottavio offered it to the Grand Duke and to Prospero Visconti. 6. A set of two hundred and forty unbound drawings of various sizes by Italian masters of the Renaissance. Ottavio claims that these were auto- graphs of Michelangelo, Raphael, Perino del Vaga, Parmigianino, Giulio Romano and others. It appears that Ottavio had removed these draw- ings from his father’s studio already before 1584, the date of Jacopo’s will, and had later sent them to Florence, where they were considered to be copies. 7. An album of three hundred autograph drawings attributed to these same ‘valenthuomini’. Ottavio proposed this album to Prospero Visconti. 8. A collection of ‘inventioni stravaganti’ for a prince’s sideboard, attributed to Giulio Romano: designs for vases ‘all’antica’ and for other types of gold- smith work, likewise collected in a bound volume. Ottavio offered it to the Grand Duke. 13.4 The Contents of Strada’s Collection of Prints and Drawings 13.4.1 The Prints As in the case of the paintings, these documents do not allow to identify in- dividual sheets from Strada’s print room, but it does give sufficient informa- tion to evoke some notion of what it may have contained, and consequently what impression it made on its visitors. That is the easiest in the case of the prints, in particular those of Dürer. With two hundred and sixteen sheets the Dürer album represented a substantial part of that master’s oeuvre, and prob- ably included his most famous images, such as Knight, Death and the Devil and Melencolia i [Figs. 13.3–13.4]. That Strada’s estate also included a set of the Ehrenpforte—its hundred and ninety two separate sheets doubtless loosely gathered in an album—testifies to his great respect for the works of the Nurem- berg master [Figs. 13.5–13.6]. It moreover correlates to his interest in the biographies of the Roman em- perors, including their medieval and modern successors. In the 1540s Strada had lived only a few doors away from Dürer’s house, so he could know his repu- tation at first hand from his neighbours’ reports, and must have had access to his works through his connection with Nuremberg artists and with the circle of patricians who had commissioned or collected his works, such as Willibald Im- hoff. These connections stimulated his interest in Dürer’s work and may have facilitated his acquisition of a copy of the Ehrenpforte and a quantity of the master’s prints that was exceptional even at the time.