Page - 733 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 2

733Ambitions as a Publisher Ottavio’s advice in his 1574 letter to his father not to publish a German edition of the Epitome, because a German edition already existed, ‘with the same med- als as ours’.25 14.4.2 The Copyright Privilege of January 1556 The many copies preserved are another indication that the Epitome thesauri antiquitatum was a success. Certainly it also will have increased Strada’s pres- tige, so it is not surprising that he intended to continue the experiment. So once returned to Nuremberg in late 1555, he prepared a request to the Emperor Charles v for a copyright privilege pertaining to a number of books he was pre- paring and intended to publish at short notice. The privilege was granted on 8 January 1556. It describes five quite substantial encyclopaedic historical works. The first of these is a complete edition of the Fasti consulari et triumphali, a huge inscription listing the names of the annually elected magistrates of the Roman Republic.26 As mentioned in Chapter 3.6, the fragments of this had been found in the Forum Romanum in 1546, and on the initiative of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese had been collected and set up in a room in Michelangelo’s Palazzo dei Conservatori on the Capitol. Known since then as the Fasti capi- tolini, this serial inscription was of great value in establishing the chronology of the Roman Republic and the Empire, and had already given rise to several publications and controversies. It had been transcribed and edited by Onofrio 25 Doc. 1574-12-05: ‘Della Epitome l’è ben vero che sarebe un bella cosa se fusse stampato in totesco, ma ‘l de già vi è stampato in todesco, con le medeme medaglie come le nostre; però se volesse far quella spesa bisognerei far le roversi apresso, et costarebe troppo’. Strada 1557 was an exact copy of Strada’s own edition, printed by Andreas Gessner in Zürich. Diethelm Keller’s Kunstliche und aigendtliche Bildtnussen der rhomischen Keyseren, ihrer Weybern und Kindern, Zürich 1558, is a reworking of Strada’s Epitome thesauri antiquita- tum and Guillaume Rouillé’s Promptuaire des médailles, using woodcuts carefully copied from Strada’s book; Imperatorum Romanorum omnium orientalium et occidentalium veris- simae imagines, Zürich 1559, uses a selection of Strada’s biographies to explain Rudolf Wyssenbach’s earlier series of woodcuts. Both books were again published by Andreas Gessner in Zürich. Surveys of all editions in Dekesel 1997, pp. 871–875, cat. nr 5/ S70–S74 (Cat. 5), and Pelc 2002, cat. nrs. 96 (pp. 207–208) and 142, 143, 144 (pp. 253–255). 26 Doc 1556-01-08: ‘Fasti in Romana historia ab urbe condita, hoc est regum, consulum, dic- tatorum, magistrorum equitum, tribunorum militum consularis potestatis, censorum, imperatorum et aliorum quorundam magistratuum Romanorum, una cum ovationibus eorum et triumphis, a Romulo rege primo usque ad imperatorum Carolum Quintum augustum, tum ex Capitolio tum reliquis antiquissimis monumentis desumptos On- ophrio Panvinio, Veronensi, auctore, tomus primus, ex museo Jacobi de Strada, Mantuani antiquarii’.