Page - 849 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 2

849Agent of Change: Imperial Antiquary and Architect other artists or dealers of his acquaintance. They would moreover consult his materials and his opinions when preparing their own projects, such as the houses they planned to build in town or on their estates, the decoration of some particularly representative rooms, the commissioning of a family por- trait or tomb, and so on. Such consultation increased Strada’s goodwill at court, and by exchange may have brought him other, material advantages—think for instance of hospitality extended by his patrons to himself and his companions on his travels to Munich and Prague.28 Direct financial advantage he gained only when he sold objects from his collection or stock-in-trade, or when he provided concrete services, such as preparing a set of designs and/or eventu- ally organizing and supervising an architectural or decorative project. In Chap- ter 12 it has been argued that such may have been the case for the design of the house of his Vienna neighbour, Christoph von Teuffenbach, and of the decora- tion of the suite of state rooms at Bučovice in Moravia. 16.5 Strada’s Influence: An Agent of Change 16.5.1 The Diffusion of Innovations In this way Strada’s Museum, both as an emporium of books, antiquities and works of art, and as a more general clearing-house of information about up- to-date ideas and artistic forms, therefore also as a source of inspiration, sup- plied the needs of a fashionable, cosmopolitan and intellectual elite. This elite consisted at least in part of an avant-garde of ‘early adopters’, in the anachro- nistic terms of modern communication: those who pick up new ideas, develop new tastes, try out new products, embrace new styles in the arts as well as in their way of life. Because of their curiosity, their intellectual flexibility, and their position, members of this group set the trends and exerted a certain influ- ence on the ideas and tastes of their peers in the region. The very existence of such an avant-garde might give rise to a conscious reaction among patrons of a more conservative stamp, expressly opting for a more familiar, conventional style, conforming to national prejudice (‘Teutsch’, German, as opposed to ‘Wel- sch’, Italian). The Laubenhof of the Schallaburg in Austria, with its rightly fa- mous terracotta decoration, may be an example of this: it seems to reflect such a conscious rejection of the new, Vitruvian principles as promoted by Strada and exemplified in some of the houses built for members of the cosmopolitan court-elite such as Schwarzenau, Bučovice and Kratochvile. 28 Thus on a trip from Vienna to Prague he could spend the night at Schwarzenau, belonging to Reichart Strein, and at Třeboň or Český Krumlov, seats of Vilém z Rožmberka.