Page - 693 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 2

693Visual Documentation include the ‘most perfect’ achievements even of the Middle Ages, as does the singular image of a Christ Pantocrator in the Vienna Codex miniatus 21,3 [Figs.  13.22–13.23 and 13.98].111 But as a true follower of Giulio and an admirer of the divine Raphael, Strada chiefly collected material documenting the art of his own time, which heavily drew upon the art of classical Rome. In his I veri precetti della pittura Arme- nini gives an eloquent description of Raphael’s Loggia in the Vatican, which he considered as the archetypal example to be followed by anyone intending to decorate a loggia [Figs. 13.99–13.101]. He then relates how: …every part of this ensemble, including the floor, was drawn on paper and illuminated, in the most suitable manner, by the hand of the most talented young men that were in Rome in my time, among whom I myself took part; and thus coloured it was then sent by whom had commissioned it, and who paid royally for it, to Antwerp to a great lord of the Fuggers who, it is said, took the greatest delight in it. And that agent whom I men- tioned had another copy made, which, soon afterwards, he himself took to Spain to the great Court of King Philip, with other drawings which he bought everywhere or which he commissioned us to draw for him.112 The documentation of Raphael’s Loggia mentioned here has been preserved in a splendid illuminated codex of the Nationalbibliothek in Vienna, which has been discussed by Bernice Davidson.113 The sumptuousness of the codex, illuminated in many colours including lapis lazuli and gold leaf, bears wit- ness to Fugger’s high ambitions, its precision to Strada’s unbound admiration for this greatest example of Renaissance decoration [Figs. 13.102–13.107]. It is also perhaps the best testimony of Strada’s perfectionism, and as such can be compared with the less sumptuous, but equally precise set of drawings of the architecture and decoration of the Palazzo del Te at Mantua that Strada com- missioned from the young local painter Ippolito Andreasi in 1567.114 Though Armenini’s contention that Strada provided a second copy to Philip ii is not corroborated by other sources, it is nonetheless clear that the precision and magnificence of such drawings strongly appealed to other collectors besides 111 Vienna, önb, Cod. min. 21,3, fol. 29; I have not been able to identify the original—since it is preserved in the context of a set of numismatic drawings, it may be Strada’s own inter- pretation of a medieval or spurious coin, instead of the copy of a mural or mosaic. 112 Armenini 1587, pp. 180. 113 The drawings of the Vatican Loggia are now in önb, Cod. min. 33; see Davidson 1979; Davidson 1983; Davidson 1984; Jansen 1987, p.15. 114 Dïsseldorf, Kunstbibliothek; catalogued and discussed in Harprath 1984 (with further bibliography).