Page - 711 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 2

711Visual Documentation Strada appears to have collected similar material from other cities, since the Index sive catalogus also mentions a ‘book of the most beautiful and famous palaces that can be seen in Rome and in other Italian cities such as Florence, Mantua and Venice’130 The plans of an unidentified palace and of Pisa Cathe- dral, and the Duomo and San Lorenzo in Florence preserved in the Strahov codex are probably remnants of this material, and would have served Strada’s stated purpose to perfection [Figs. 13.21–13.24]. 13.9 Images as a Source of Knowledge As in other aspects of Strada’s affairs, the scarcity of surviving sources docu- menting Strada’s collection of drawings and prints allows few definitive conclusions as to its precise scope, size and quality. The preceding account nevertheless demonstrates Strada’s vast ambition in this field. The documents we have chiefly relate to Strada’s purchases in the 1550s from Serlio and the heirs of Perino del Vaga and Giulio Romano and his commissions of documen- tary drawings of the mid-1550s in Rome, in Mantua in the late 1560s and in Mantua and perhaps Ferrara in the 1570s. Doubtless it is no coincidence that it were these spectacular acquisitions which left some traces in the sources, and there is a good chance that they constituted the most spectacular components of Strada’s graphic collection. Yet it is also clear that they must be considered as the tip of the iceberg, and that they represent only a small part of Strada’s holdings. Strada’s documented acquisitions formed part of a conscious and focused programme to collect visual documentation. This programme was already un- der way in the late 1540s, when Strada had begun collecting the numismatic material he used for the manuscripts he presented to Hans Jakob Fugger and to Ferdinand i and Maximilian ii, for his own Epitome Thesauri Antiquitatum of 1553, and to help out Guillaume du Choul with the illustrations of his Dis- cours de la religion des anciens Romains printed at Lyon in 1556 [above, Figs. 3.55–3.57]. It was a sustained programme, continuing at least until the late 1570s, and there can be no doubt that he was constantly alert to opportunities to enrich his holdings. It is likely that Strada’s preoccupation had originated in his early experi- ence in Giulio Romano’s studio. It was common practice for young artists to collect drawings or to copy them, in order to lay in a stock of suitable motifs and compositional ‘inventions’ for later reference: the practice is described in 130 Index sive catalogus, Appendix D, nr. 35.