Page - 740 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 2

Chapter 14740 he remained involved in the book trade, as is clear from his trip to Frankfurt to collect his dues from Pietro Perna, and from the fact that in 1570 his was the address in Vienna where to buy copies of Castelvetro’s translation of Aristotle’s Poetics, published by the Vienna printer Kaspar Stainhofer, which suggest that Strada may have been instrumental in organizing and perhaps also financing the edition.41 Another indication is Niccolò Stopio’s remark in his letter to Hans Jakob Fug- ger of 15 June 1567, reporting on Strada’s activities in Venice: ‘Strada does not consort with sculptors here, but only with goldsmiths or engravers, or miniatur- ists, which is his business (‘mestiere’)’.42 Clearly Strada profited from his trips to Venice to commission the desired woodcuts and engravings for the voluminous illustrated books he projected. The quantity and quality of the illustrations he envisaged presuppose a considerable time for their realization, both because good engravers may have been rare, and because Strada would not have the capital to pay for all of them at once. We know that the illustrations for Serlio’s Settimo Libro Book were engraved in Venice, as were those for the Sesto Libro, which would never be actually published. It is conceivable that images for some of his other projects were likewise commissioned during his visits to Venice. Such commissions of course involved a lot of preparation. Strada had to pro- vide a carefully drawn exemplar of each illustration for the engravers. This he cannot all have done himself during his short and busy sojourns in Venice, so these were probably prepared beforehand, both by himself and by assistants he employed in his studio, among whom his two elder sons Paolo and Ottavio. Since he presented these illustrations as scientific documents, such assistants must have worked from Strada’s own sketches, and in any case under his close supervision. The same holds for the texts of the various books. These were not all writ- ten or even edited by Strada himself, but of course a definitive reading of the texts needed to be provided: Ottavio’s 1574 letter, discussed above, documents the care taken with the texts and the translations of the Serlio volumes. For 41 Lodovico Castelvetro, Poetica d’Aristotele vulgarizzata, et sposta per Lodouico Casteluetro, in Vienna d’Austria, per Gaspar Stainhofer, 1570. Reputedly Maximilian ii himself had supported its publication (Marchetti/ Patrizi 1979), and he may have appointed Strada to help Castelvetro realize it (even if only as an interpreter between author and printer). It is quite possible that Strada himself may have invested in the edition, which proved to be a bestseller, but in view of Castelvetro’s heretical reputation he would not have wished that fact to be advertised. A subsequent, posthumous treatise by Castelvetro, the presentation of which by Castelvetro’s brother Giovanni Maria is dated Vienna 15 January 1572, was printed by Strada’s old associate Pietro Perna, as was the second edition of the Poetica itself (both under Perna’s pseudonym Pietro de Sedabonis). 42 BHStA-LA 4852, fols. 35–36f.: ‘Il Strada non pratica qui con scultori, se non con orefici o disegnatori di stampe in rame, o miniatori, che è il suo mestiere’.