Page - 749 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 2

749Ambitions as a Publisher 1553 Epitome thesauri antiquitatum [above, Figs. 14.6–14.9]. It is likely that at least a part of the engraved images included in Ottavio Strada’s posthumously published De Vitis Imperatorum printed in Frankfurt in 1615, which is similar but less ambitious in concept as his father’s project, were printed from plates commissioned by Jacopo in the 1560s and 1570s [cf. Figs. 14.6–14.9]. Unlike Ottavio’s volume, Jacopo’s corpus moreover was intended to include detailed descriptions of each coin, as well as the other material sources for the gestae of each prince as documented in the Fasti capitolini and other documented inscriptions. Strada’s 1574 copyright privilege gives some indication of the direction and the scope of his ambition as a publisher. All works listed are related to the his- tory or the arts of classical Antiquity, though some of these, such as the Serlio volumes, are geared towards contemporary use of the antique example or pre- cept. Most of them are exhaustive, of an encyclopaedic character; all of them are directed towards a literate, but not necessarily a purely academic audience. Certainly they were directed at a prosperous audience, since none of them can have been cheap: they are all huge volumes, folios or ample quartos, some of them in many volumes. Perhaps their most important common characteris- tic is that each and all of them were to be provided with ample illustrations. This would have made them more expensive, but also more attractive to the wealthy clientele envisaged, yet only the Serlio volumes, the Equestrium Statu- arum and the Series Imperatorum can be imagined to some extent as Renais- sance equivalents of the coffee-table book. Strada’s insistence on including such visuals aids rather reflects his conviction of the value of the image—and therefore of drawing and design, the art of making images—as a source of in- formation and expertise, of knowledge. This conviction he had shared with or even contributed to Hans Jakob Fugger and his circle; Fugger’s former librar- ian, Samuel Quiccheberg, codified it in his treatise on the science of collect- ing, the Inscriptiones vel tituli Theatrum of 1565, and a year later Strada himself expressed it in his 1566 letter to Adam von Dietrichstein cited earlier: ‘for truly, your lordship, by drawing one comes to know an infinite variety of things, and one’s judgment becomes more excellent on all subjects’.60 14.5.5 Printing in Frankfurt Some time before requesting the copyright privilege, in March 1574, Strada told Hans Jakob Fugger that he planned to send his son Ottavio Strada to Venice ‘per alcuni miei negotij’, offering to have him execute any commissions for Fugger. Possibly Strada’s private business was connected with the acquisition of fur- ther antiquities and works of art: he offered to have Ottavio collect information 60 Quiccheberg 1565; Doc. 1566-03-01. The theme is treated above, Chs. 11.6 and 13.9.