Page - 709 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 2

709Visual Documentation been published in 1550, had been reprinted many times in expanded versions, and for the first time in Latin in 1567; it continued to be regularly reprinted for another century.126 So Strada’s initiative to bring out another edition is not original as such. What distinguished him from other editors of the book is his ambition to hugely increase the amount of information it contained. To the descriptions of each single region and city he planned to add records of its learned men, accompanied with a list of their published and unpublished works. Moreover he intended to include careful transcriptions of ancient epi- graphs present, ‘portrayed exactly as they are in those marbles, with the figures and other ornaments surrounding them’, and illustrations of the coats of arms of its princes and its principal noble families. And these were by no means the only images he planned to add: he also wished to include geographical maps of each region, and detailed profiles of each single town. For this reason he begged the Duke …to have documented for me in drawing Your Highness’ cities, that is Mantua, Casale, Aich, Alba and the others Your Highness has in the Mon- ferrato; and also Your Highness’ principal fortresses: in the Mantovano Your Highness has fortresses that seem cities, such as Viadana, Cannedo, Gazolo and others I don’t remember: those I would like to have as well, but that the view should be taken from a point where they show well, and that it should be drawn on a sheet of folio reale size, or slightly smaller…127 126 On the book, its author and its sources, see now Petrella 2004. 127 Doc 1577-10-04(a). Figures 13.118–13.119 Anonymous draftsman, working for Jacopo Strada: perspective view and elevation of Ammannati’s cortile of the Palazzo Pitti, Florence.