Page - 805 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 2

805Student of Antiquity four in the bibliography of his treatise, it cannot have been intended in a deroga- tory sense.13 Though Ligorio may have had little Latin and less Greek, the other three easily read and adequately wrote in Latin. Strada’s lexicographical enter- prise and the description of Greek coins in his manuscript A.A.A. NumismatΩn Dιασκευη, which were actually written in Greek, demonstrate that he had at least a basic command of that language. Agustín merely implied that these erudite artist-antiquaries drew primarily on modern editions and—in Ligo- rio’s case—translations of ancient texts, and on modern commentaries and secondary literature for the facts and interpretations included in their volumi- nous compilations. If such was his intention, Strada may well have agreed with him: while attacking Lazius in his letter to Maximilian ii, he does give him his due as an ‘erudite and learned historian’, a ‘profession’ to which he himself did not pretend, though he respected it just as he expected Lazius to respect his. It seems no coincidence that Agustín coupled the names of Ligorio, Vico, Goltzius and Strada: though the emphasis differs in each case, their activi- ties largely overlap, and their approach seems very similar [Figs. 15.1–15.4]. Certainly Strada was aware of their existence and their work, and it is very likely that he personally knew them, perhaps already from his stay in Rome in the 1530s and 1540s, if not from his stay in Rome in 1553–1555. In his letter to Maximilian ii he cites an opinion of Pirro Ligorio as an authority, and he cer- tainly frequented Enea Vico in Venice in the mid-1550s: Vico cited coins from Strada’s collection, just as Strada cited coins from Vico’s, and they also copied or exchanged each other’s drawings of ancient sculpture. Moreover, at some time Vico was presented with a coin from Fugger’s collection through Strada’s mediation. But Strada knew Vico by reputation even before that, and seems to have been influenced by Vico’s earlier numismatic works.14 In his exhaustive 13 The English translation as given in Stenhouse 2005, p. 80, is mistaken: Spanish ‘otro tanto’, in the Italian translation ‘altro tanto’ (modern: ‘altrettanto’) means ‘just as much’, ‘equally’, not ‘otherwise’. The free translation given in Mandowsky/Mitchell 1963, pp. 30–31 implies the same mistaken interpretation. Agustín’s esteem of his antiquarian friends was def- initely more positive that these translations suggest: ‘though they made use of the re- search done by others, they wrote as well as they drew’. 14 Bodon 1997, pp. 61–67, 172, 176; Jansen 1993(a), pp. 232. Vico’s Le Imagini con tutti i riversi trovati et le vite degli [xii] imperatori tratte dalle medaglie et dalle historie degli antichi<…>, published by Zantani in 1548 (Vico 1548) must have impressed Strada for its elegance and the precison of its images. The idea to include empty circles illustrating emperors of which no authentic coin had (yet) been found, and the addition of elegant frontis- pieces with an ‘elogio’ for each emperor are among the aspects Strada practises in his own Epitome and/or his manuscript numismatic albums. Vico moved to Ferrara before Strada’s visits to Venice in 1566–1569, so he was not among the ‘orefici o disegnatori di stampe in rame, o miniatori’ with whom Strada associated according to Nicolò Stopio’s letter of