Page - 772 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 2

Chapter 14772 The second ‘tabula’ (item 11) was much more splendid, better drawn and showing more human figures and ‘other things’ than Escalin’s version. It had been brought back to Vienna from Constantinople by Ogier Ghislain de Bus- becq, Ferdinand and Maximilian’s learned ambassador to the Sultan, who allowed Strada to copy it (as well as presenting him with countless ancient coins). Its style may have been similar to the famous Kostümbuch drawn in Constantinople by Lambert de Vos a few years later for Busbecq’s successor, Karel Rijm [Fig. 14.37–14.39].107 Just as these drawings provided an Ottoman, contemporary parallel to those of the friezes of the Roman column monuments, Strada’s documentation of the Roman castrametatio was mirrored by no less than three different tabulae documenting the manner in which the Turkish army encamped. The first of these (item 8) was based on a huge map of Suleiman’s 1527 siege of Vienna in the Palazzo Ducale at Mantua, which Strada had borrowed from the Duke in order to have it copied in 1571.108 The original was painted by an unnamed Flemish artist in gouache on canvas shortly after the event. It depicted the siege in great detail, paying particular attention to the various tents housing the Sultan himself, his Pashas and the captains of his Janissaries as well as to the actual topography of Vienna and its surrounding countryside. The second one (item 9) was not quite as magnificent as the first: it showed Suleiman’s castrametatio in his wars against the Persians. This had been painted by ‘some Frenchman who in Turkey had abjured the Christian faith’, and it had been brought back from Constantinople by Strada’s friend and patron, Bishop Anto- nius Verantius (Antun Vrančić), Busbecq’s fellow ambassador.109 The third in- stance (item 39) consisted of two large images, the sheets of which were bound as a book, but its draughtsman and origin are defined no further. Finally item 28, a ‘chronicle written in Arabic on [the history and/or the genealogy of] the Ottoman dynasty’ is paralleled in item 19, Liber de familia illustrissimae domus Austriacae, on the history and the genealogy of the House of Austria. Paulin); he was a protégé of the French soldier and writer Guillaume du Bellay, seigneur de Langey (and the subject of a sonnet by the latter’s nephew Joachim du Bellay). He was François I’s envoy to Suleiman the Magnificent in 1541. See Anselme De Sainte-Ange/Ange De Sainte-Rosalie 1733, pp. 929–930; Bouvier 2007. Strada also possessed a manuscript military treatise by Guillaume du Bellay, which may have reached him through the same agency (mentioned in his 1574 copyright privilege, Doc. 1574-05-30). 107 Bremen, University Library, Ms. Or 9; for a annotated facsimile edition, see Vos/Koch 1991. On Busbecq, see Von Martels 1989. 108 Cf. above, Ch. 9.7; Docs. 1571-03-19; 1571-11-20; 1577-10-04(a). 109 On Antun Vrančić and his connection with Strada, see above, Ch. 11.3.