Page - 785 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 2

785Ambitions as a Publisher one of his children who had a bad relationship with their father.131 Though Ottavio, next mentioned in the document, likewise was given a small legacy of fifty Rhenish Gulden, Strada explicitly excluded him from any further share in his inheritance, and then began summing up the list of his crimes which has already been referred above. Then he reiterated his intention to disinherit Ottavio entirely, underlined that Ottavio should have no power to challenge Paolo’s and Tobia’s legacies, and begged the local authorities to ensure that his children be protected against Ottavio’s possible pretensions and that his will be executed to the letter. After this follows the most astonishing clause in this extraordinary docu- ment: Strada stipulated that all the manuscripts from his library that were listed in the attached survey—this is a fair copy of the Index sive catalogus— should be handed over to his legitimized son Tobia, ‘because my legitimate son Paul has no interest in them’. Tobia—or rather the trustees that were to be appointed for him, for at this time Tobia was at most seven years old— were to have these printed without delay by Strada’s printer at Frankfurt. To finance this, Strada had already instructed and authorized Paolo to execute a deed of gift immediately after his death, donating his entire Musaeum to a predetermined recipient. This gift should include both the library and the Kunstkammer, but of course it excluded the manuscripts listed in the Index sive catalogus: together with the illustrations—drawings, woodblocks and engraved plates— belonging to them, these should be placed under seal immediately after Strada’s death. Tantalizingly the intended recipient was not identified, but it must have been a rich and powerful prince—such as the Em- peror, the Elector of Saxony or the Duke of Bavaria—if Strada thought the gift he expected in return would be amply sufficient to pay for the printing.132 It is then only that Strada finally arrived at actually bestowing his remaining property, his ‘houses and gardens, together with all moveable goods, and the cash value of all assets due to him, both in writing and otherwise’. After due 131 Ibidem. It should be noted that Lavina in fact gets the biggest of these preliminary lega- cies. Strada’s housekeeper and mistress, Margaretha Hummerin, merely gets her wages for the seven years she had lived with him and her clothes, and an extra legacy of only ten Gulden. His servant Christoph Sartor from Rosenheim got likewise ten Gulden. His young illegitimate daughter Sicilia was to receive a legacy of hundred Gulden when she came of age, and until that time was to be dressed from the interest of that sum. The two daughters of his late legitimate daughter Anna, who had both already taken religious orders, got twenty-five Gulden each. Strada’s testament makes it quite clear that he made a strict distinction between his children born within and out of wedlock (perhaps also in recognition of his legitimate children’s rights in respect of their mother’s inheritance?) 132 In fact Strada assigns half of these proceeds to Paolo himself, while the other half should be made available to Tobia’s trustees to finance the printing.