Page - 769 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 2

769Ambitions as a Publisher University Libraries of Vienna and Prague.102 Though Strada refers to the coins which he possessed either in the original or in the drawings he made of them in the cabinets of other collectors, it appears that this volume was not intend- ed to be illustrated. Iitem 7 was conceived as the visual component of this textual numismatic corpus: this was a book drawn in Strada’s own hand on folio sheets each show- ing images of twelve coins and their reverses. These were chronologically or- dered, beginning at Julius Caesar and ending with the ruling Emperor, Rudolf ii. Compared to this, item 5, which showed just one coin and its reverse preced- ing a brief life of each Emperor, should be considered as a luxury item directed at a more general public. As to its contents it can be compared to Strada’s own Epitome thesauri antiquitatum, as to its appearance Strada probably envisaged something close to the beautifully executed volumes of Hubert Goltzius’ Icones Imperatorum Romanorum, with their splendid chiaroscuro woodcuts [Figs. 14.33–14.34], rather than to Andreas Gessner’s pirated folio edition of Strada’s Epitome [Figs. 14.32 and above, Figs. 14.12–14.13]. Complementing these series of imperial effigies based on their coinage was a book illustrating their portraits from portrait busts preserved in Rome and elsewhere (item 6). This item can be related to the separate sets of drawings recently rediscovered in the Dresden Kupferstich-Kabinett [above, Ch. 13.7.1; Figs. 13.78 and 13.79–13.81]: though not identical, they give a good impression what it would have looked like.103 Classical sculpture was further represented in the sets of drawings of the friezes of the columns of Trajan (item 37) and of Marcus Aurelius (item 41) in Rome and of Theodosius in Constantinople (item 40), and possibly in item 36, drawings of ‘all sorts of figures, reliefs, and ancient worked and carved sarcophagi and monuments [found] among the Roman, Neapolitan, Florentine, Venetian, Mantuan and other Italian peoples’. But since the phrasing of the latter description suggests the contemporary po- litical situation rather than that of the Roman Empire, the chance is that these drawings represented or at least included medieval and contemporary funer- ary monuments, rather than ancient ones. 102 Vienna, Universitätsbibliothek, Ms. IIII-160898 [old shelfmark iii 483]; Prague, University Library, Ms vii A 1. Two volumes of an unfinished version are preserved in Munich, bsb- hs, Clm 163 and 164; cf. Jansen 1993(a), pp. 215–217 and 227–232. 103 skd-kk, inv. nr. Ca 75: Imperatorum Romanorum ac eorum coniugum<…>; skd-kk, inv. nr. Ca 76 (vol. i), Ca 77 (vol. ii) and Ca 75 (vol. iii): Series continuata omnium Imperato- rum<…>; full titles given Ch. 13.7.1, notes 81–82; cf. Melzer 2010, pp. 130–138; Jansen / Metze 2018. Strada described his ideas for the illustrations of this item in his letter to Christophe Plantin, cf. below, Ch. 14.8.