Page - 824 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 2

Chapter 15824 Strada’s drawings present idealized images of their objects, not merely restoring the damage caused by time and use, but also improving the original design. It provides the observer with an ideal representation or reconstruc- tion of Antiquity. If that was Strada’s aim, it is easy to understand his criti- cism of the way in which Wolfgang Lazius and his engraver, Hans Lautensack, had reproduced the coins in the sample they had had printed to promote their planned illustrated catalogue of the Imperial collection [Figs. 15.36–15.37]: Even if a medal is somewhat defective, it does not for that reason loose the perfection of its design. They [Lazius and his engraver] look at nothing but the outside contours, showing the damage to the rim; so that whoever looks at it will conclude that His Majesty has the most unsightly [‘goffe’] medals in the world.30 There is a world of difference indeed between Lazius’ and Lautensack’s care- ful rendering of the actual coins in Ferdinand’s collection and Strada’s own detailed drawing of a restored reverse, drawn at roughly five times the size of the numismatic model, which allows a careful reconstruction of the monu- ment it illustrates [Fig. 15.38]. In Strada’s eyes Ferdinand was not served by Lautensack’s ‘clumsy’ engravings of second-rate and damaged objects, how- ever authentic, but only by beautiful and refined images evoking the splen- dour of the Emperor’s august predecessors, which helped enhance his prestige. When Strada distinguishes his ‘profession’ or vocation from that of Lazius, he implied two distinct, but equivalent, competences. He prized his capacity to provide such careful reconstructions, visual interpretations or explanations of the objects and their iconography, as highly as his purely antiquarian exper- tise, which allowed him to accurately transcribe and interpret the inscriptions on the coins, to attribute them correctly, and to place them in the context pro- vided by the relevant literary sources. In June 1559, Strada referred in a letter to Fugger to the ‘interpretatione’ his fellow antiquary Antoine Morillon had provided of the ancient stelae, altars and tombs illustrated in an album in the possession of Cardinal Granvelle. He praised Morillon not only for his industry (‘fatica’) but also for his ingenuity (Morillon was ‘capriccioso’), which had enabled him to get right (‘indovinare’, 30 Lazius 1558; Jacopo Strada to Martín de Guzmán, Doc. 1558-02-21(b), transcribed in Appendix A. It should be noted that Strada also criticized the rendering of the inscrip- tions on the coins, which were often mistaken, causing many coins to be assigned to the wrong ruler; doubtless it was this, rather than the way they were reproduced, that moved Antonio Agustín to support Strada in the ensuing controversy.