Page - 718 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 2

Chapter 13718 also was intended to promote the reception of the formal language common to the most admired art of Strada’s own time and fatherland, and that of the Ancient world, in particular of the Roman Empire. Altogether it appears that Strada’s collection of graphic material was of quite extraordinary interest: exactly contemporary with Vasari’s Libro de’ disegni, it was one of the first and largest collections of autograph master drawings as such and was complemented by a huge quantity of specially commissioned documentary drawings, at least a part of which—one thinks of the illuminated drawings of Raphael’s Vatican Loggia—was of the very highest quality imagin- able. Covering a great many artistic and antiquarian subjects, it parallels and to some extent functioned as a model for the similar sections in the Kunstkam- mer of his patrons. In view of its contents, its aims, and the term Musaeum which Strada explicitly and proudly used to indicate his library and collection, it can moreover be considered as a precursor of Cassiano del Pozzo’s famous Musaeum chartacaeum, though the dispersal of Strada’s collection and the relatively scanty archival documentation make it difficult to decide to what extent these two paper museums overlapped in purpose, in method, perhaps even in actual contents.