Page - 720 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 2

Chapter 14720 anything about Strada’s wife, but she must have had certain talents, if Strada could leave his house and affairs in her hands during his frequent and long absences.2 Strada’s consciously stoic report to his old friend Jacopo Dani of her death in September 1574 suggests a basically happy marriage: Last week I had a most welcome letter from Your Honour, to which I have not responded at once as was my intention, because my wife suffered from such a grave illness of the chest, that in the five days that she was in bed the doctors have never been able to help her; and thus she has passed to a better life. May the Lord have her soul. We have been together for thirty years; there has never been a quarrel between us, nor even an impatient word.3 From Strada’s letter to Adam von Dietrichstein of March 1566 we know that by that time the couple had seven children living.4 Strada’s will of July 1584 shows that four of these reached maturity, the two sons Paolo and Ottavio mentioned, and two daughters, Anna and Lavina. Anna had married Steffan Präussen and had had two daughters, but she herself had died by the time Strada dictat- ed his will, and her two girls both had already taken monastic vows. Doubt- less she had been given a dowry of 400 Gulden, as had her sister Lavina (or Lavia), who in 1584 was the widow of Ferdinand Luzenburger or Lützelburger.5 The existence of a daughter Katharina who would have been Rudolf ii’s 2 On Ottilie Schenk von Rossberg’s family, see above, Ch. 2.4. 3 Doc 1574-09-09: ‘La settimana passata hebbi una della Signoria Vostra gratissima, et non gli rispose al’hora come era l’animo mio, per causa di una gravissima infirmità della punta che travagliava mia moglie, che in cinque giorni ch’è stata nel letto mai li medici l’anno potuto aiutare, et cossì è passata a meglior vitta. Il Signor Iddio habbi l’anima sua. Siamo stati 30 anni insieme, mai ci fu querella fra di noi, ne una mala parola hor patienza’. Both Maximilian and Rudolf sent their gentlemen of the chamber to attend her funeral, ‘et vi era un monte di signori’, confirming both her own status and that of her husband (Doc 1576-09-28). 4 Doc 1566-03-01: ‘Vostra Signoria Illustrissima sappia che adesso son più povero che mai sia per lo avanti stato, e più carico di spesa che prima, perchè mi truovo vii figlioli vivi…’. 5 Doc 1584-07-01. The Lützelburger were probably close associates of the Stradas: it seems like- ly that the ‘Barbara von Luxemburg’, widow of one ‘dr Adam’, whom Ottavio married in 1583, was a relative of Ferdinand Lützelburger, perhaps his sister. In the eighteenth century this name made their French descendants boast of two Imperial Bohemian connections: not only with Rudolf, but also with the house of Luxemburg. Possibly the Lützelburger were Nurem- berg patricians, business relations of the elder Strada with whom he had remained in con- tact; perhaps they were descendants of the Basle wood engraver Hans (Franck) Lützelburger († 1526), responsible for the blocks of Holbein’s Dance of Death. On the other hand it cannot be excluded that they were members of the noble family resident in Saxony and Lusatia, which furnished officials to several Austrian Archdukes (Kneschke 1865, pp. 52–53).