Page - 836 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 2

Chapter 16836 artists, Arcimboldo in the first place, were likewise commissioned to conceive, design and supervise such festivals. 16.2 Strada’s Role as an Agent 16.2.1 Agent and Broker? In such cases the initial commission was probably informally given by the Emperor himself, and Strada can thus be considered to act as an agent of his patron, though in practice he was probably asked to report to the court digni- tary ultimately responsible, for instance the Master of the Horse (Oberststall- meister). He thus functioned as an intermediary between the patron or his substitute and the artists and craftsmen who were doing the actual work (as well as the courtiers who were expected to figure in the festival, who had some say in what they were going to wear, having to pay for it). In view of the huge amount of work to be done in a very brief time, Strada must have collaborated closely with some or all of the other senior artists at court, such as Arcimboldo, Terzio, Manmacher and Ferrabosco. We know from Van Mander that travel- ling artists—such as Bartholomeus Spranger, Hans Mont and Van Mander himself—were also recruited. In a similar way, he would have acted as an in- termediary between the Emperor and the artists employed in the decoration of spaces in the Hofburg, the Neugebäude, or other Imperial residences. As in the architectural projects, he would derive his authority for such supervision from the Emperor’s brief, his official position as Imperial Architect, and his undoubted expertise. Such supervision came naturally to Strada, because of his familiarity with Giulio Romano’s role as general superintendent of all architectural and artistic endeavour at Mantua. To some extent Giulio’s example may have furnished Strada with a model for his own career: his construction of a prestigious house, serving as a conscious advertisement of its builder’s competence and exper- tise, is the most evident example. On the other hand, it is equally evident that neither in Vienna nor in Munich Strada ever aspired to anything approaching Giulio’s central position in the artistic, architectural and infrastructural poli- cies of the Gonzaga state. This was partly due to the different circumstances: as an Italian Strada was probably more of an outsider in Vienna than Giulio was in Mantua.6 The functioning of the multinational Imperial court was not comparable to that of a small homogeneous state as Mantua; moreover the 6 In a letter to Jacopo Dani, Strada attributes a lack of collaboration by the local authorities partly to the fact ‘ch’io non sono tedesco’ (Doc. 1576-06-16).