Page - 825 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 2

825Student of Antiquity that is: to guess) the significance of most, if not all of the objects depicted.31 ‘Capriccioso’: for Strada such caprice represented the ingenuity, the histori- cal and the visual—perhaps even the poetical—imagination he held to be an important, perhaps indispensable adjunct to the scholarly erudition that an antiquary needed to come up with a satisfying—that is, both convincing and pleasing—reconstitution and interpretation of an ancient monument or artefact. Strada’s reconstructions discussed above give some inkling of what he considered convincing and pleasing. That differs very considerably from the norm maintained by some of his contemporaries, such as Lazius, Panvinio and Agustín. But his approach does not differ so very much from that of Guil- laume du Choul, who used some of Strada’s reconstructions to illustrate his own treatises reconstructing aspects of classical Antiquity [above, Ch. 3.5.3, Figs. 3.55–3.57]. And it is equally close to Serlio’s, who exploited his consid- erable, well-informed imagination in a similar way when representing the ancient monuments of Rome or reconstructing the Roman Castra as described by Polybius. There is a case to be made that both Strada’s image of Antiquity and his antiquarian approach ultimately hark back to his earliest Mantuan memories, to even before the advent of Giulio Romano. They are ultimately rooted in his admiration for the works realized in Mantua by Andrea Mantegna and his followers at the end of the Quattrocento, which were as reverent of the Clas- sical past as Giulio’s. In his article, ‘Archaeology and Romance’, Charles Mitch- ell discussed the archaeological excursion cum picnic undertaken by Andrea Mantegna and his friends, the Veronese antiquary Felice Feliciano and the magistrate Samuele da Tradate along the shores of Lake Garda. His conclusion can be applied with equal force to Strada’s approach: <…>their learning<…>anticipated their objective: they were looking, not so much for novel finds, as for fresh reflections and confirmations of an Antiquity that shone in their imaginations. Antiquity was becoming an ideal of life, rather than an object of inquiry.32 15.4.2 Sharing Knowledge: The Encyclopaedic Ambition If Titian’s portrait of Strada can be considered an example of that master’s psychological penetration, there can be no doubt about the enthusiasm with which Strada shared his possessions and his passions with his patrons, 31 Doc. 1559-06-06, transcribed in Appendix A. 32 Mitchell 1960, p. 478.