Page - 680 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 2

Chapter 13680 graves [sarcophagi] and monuments in Rome, Florence, Venice, Mantua and elsewhere in Italy’. One imagines this to have been a careful selection of the best examples of Roman classical sculpture available, based on the drawings Strada had acquired during his travels.84 13.7.2 Drawings of Architecture In addition to the seven volumes of inscriptions the Index sive catalogus lists several items that Strada acquired or commissioned in a similar manner, ei- ther during his sojourn in Rome in the 1550s, or later, during his trips to Ven- ice in the 1560s. Some of these relate to ancient monuments and architecture. Though with Serlio’s ‘literary remains’ and the drawings from Giulio and Peri- no’s estates Strada had already acquired an imposing fund of documentation of ancient architecture, he remained eager to supplement this with drawings of even greater precision, and of course with designs documenting the latest discoveries. It is interesting to note that it were these, the architectural draw- ings, which he explicitly claimed to have made himself: Also several books, drawn by hand, of buildings and architecture, in which I took particular delight, and which I myself drew after most an- cient buildings, and which I reduced to the same scale as much as pos- sible; each [annotated] with the measurements of their parts.85 During his stay in Rome in 1553–1556 Strada doubtless occasionally drew and measured some ruins himself, but he was too strenuously occupied to have done this on a grand scale: presumably he left the collecting of evidence on the spot and the execution of preliminary sketches to the ‘valenti giovani’ he employed.86 When he talks about having made these drawings himself, I think this means that he translated the information provided by these rough sketches and the noted measurements into finished, precise drawings fit to be 84 Index sive catalogus, (Appendix D), nr. 36; cf. Doc. 1578-08-13. 85 Index sive catalogus (Appendix D), nr. 34. 86 The execution of precise measured drawings of triumphal arches, temples, theatres, baths and other relics of Antiquity posed complex logistic problems, as is illustrated in a pas- sage from the introduction to Philibert de l’Orme’s Architecture (Rouen 1648, fol. 131r). From the account of the difficulties he encountered while engaged on his survey of some of the Roman ruins in the 1540s, it is clear that its success was dependent on the avail- ability not only of the necessary instruments, but also of the necessary assistance: ‘<…> ce que ie ne pouvois faire sans quelque nombre de d’hommes qui me suyvoient, les uns pour gagner deux Iules ou Carlins le jour, les autres pour apprendre, comme estoient Ouvriers, Menuisiers, Scarpelins, ou Sculpteurs et semblables, qui desiroient cognoitre comme ie faisois, et participer du fruit de ce que ie mesuroi <…>’ (Orme 1567, livre V, Chap. i, quoted and discussed in Nesselrath 1984–1986, p. 137).