Page - 694 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 2

Chapter 13694 Figures 13.99–13.101 Raphael and workshop: the Loggia in the Vatican Palace. Fugger. Already in 1548, for example, Granvelle, the learned Bishop of Arras, had acquired similar sets of drawings documenting the Sistine Chapel ceil- ing and the Sala dei Giganti in the Palazzo del Te, which were executed by the Mantuan engraver Giovanni Battista Scultori.115 Whoever had been the patron of the Vienna version, it is obvious that ei- ther Strada retained access to it, or—more likely—that he had made a second copy for himself, though that may have been less expensively illuminated. He could use such a copy as the model for the engravings of an ambitious pub- lication on the sights of Rome, of which the Loggia was to be the principal component.116 From this same description it results that he also owned a set of comparable drawings of Raphael’s Vatican Stanze, most likely a version of the same set Giovanni Battista Scultori had made for Granvelle: from a later source we know that Scultori was among the artists employed by Strada in his projects.117 In conjunction with Armenini’s description of Strada’s activities in Rome this suggests that he commissioned similar documentation of other contem- porary projects. Certainly such drawings were made of other objects: a good example is a beautifully detailed measured drawing in the Albertina docu- menting the decoration of the entire facade of the Palazzo Gaddi, decorated with Polidoro da Caravaggio’s celebrated friezes all’antica, painted in grisaille [Fig. 13.108].118 This drawing is very close to the Loggia drawings: note for 115 Greppi 1977, p. 434. 116 Index sive catalogus, Appendix D, nr. 43. 117 Strada himself refers to his having at one time employed Scultori in a letter to the Duke of Mantua (Doc. 1577-10-04). 118 Vienna, Albertina, inv. nr. 15462.