Page - 647 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 2

647Visual Documentation least occasionally he had pasted certain drawings onto sheets belonging to or intended for a bound album.34 13.5 Later Fate of Strada’s Prints and Drawings Ottavio Strada’s attempts to sell prints and drawings from his father’s collection to the Grand Duke of Tuscany were unsuccessful; perhaps archival research in future may unearth further evidence of comparable transactions. What is striking is Ottavio’s reluctance to sell to his own patron, the noted amateur, connoisseur and passionate collector of art, Emperor Rudolf ii. Perhaps be- cause of Ottavio’s position as Rudolf’s trusted antiquary—and moreover as the father of Anna Maria, his illegitimate daughter who was the Emperor’s mis- tress and the mother of some of his children—he was too well aware of the dif- ficulties he would have actually to collect payment for the objects he provided. Nevertheless it may not always have been quite so easy to find suitable buyers for the drawings as Ottavio suggests in one of his letters to the Grand Duke, and in any case his position as a Gentleman of the Household and official An- tiquary to the Emperor would not allow him to thwart Rudolf’s express desires. In fact his contributions to the Imperial collections have not been inconsider- able, as the inventory of 1607 makes clear. This inventory includes a list of the illustrated books and manuscripts and of the volumes of prints and drawings that constituted a special section of the Kunstkammer. Besides at least eight examples of libri di disegni that were the fruit of Ottavio’s own industry, this list includes a number of items the description of which corresponds to objects known to have been in Jacopo’s Musaeum.35 Unfortunately, though the remains of Strada’s collection constituted the ob- vious source for graphic material of Italian origin in Prague, and consequently a considerable portion of it must have found its way into Rudolf’s collection, the groups of Italian drawings listed in the Inventory are so concisely described that even a merely tentative identification with items mentioned in Otta- vio’s correspondence is possible only in very few cases. Apart from an album of prints by Dürer and a similar volume of prints by various Italian masters, which may or may not have been identical with the book of prints Ottavio had offered to Prospero Visconti, two items are of special interest in this context. These volumes are described as follows: 34 Such as the Strahov codex (cf. below). 35 The inventory is published in Bauer/Haupt 1976.