Page - 853 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 2

853Agent of Change: Imperial Antiquary and Architect or better able to support possible failure (i.e. that he is richer), and that he has many contacts with the like-minded even when geographically distant (he is ‘cosmopolite’). Characteristic of ‘early adopters’ is that they are better educated, more intelligent, are less prejudiced and less averse to change than later adopters, have a higher socio-economic status and are more ambitious. They are more curious about innovations, know more about them and have more contact with ‘change agents’. Moreover they have wider social contacts both within and outside their own social system (they are more ‘cosmopo- lite’). Because of their wide contacts and their higher status they enjoy the respect and the trust of their less advanced peers, and function as ‘opinion leaders’. 16.5.5 Strada’s Associates as Innovators or Early Adopters Several of Strada’s patrons can be described as innovators or early adopters. Hans Jakob Fugger is the most obvious innovator among them all: inspired by his study in France and Italy, supported by the worldwide network of his family firm (‘cosmopolite’), extremely intelligent and infinitely curious, already at a young age he was the spider in an international web of scholars and printers. He played a very big role in the development of institutional, systematic collecting and documenting of information, both in his own right and later as the driving force behind the creation of the complex of collec- tions in Munich, and as inspirer of the first theoretical treatise on the subject, Samuel Quiccheberg’s Inscriptiones. As one of his agents Strada contributed objects to Fugger’s library and collections and to those of Duke Albrecht, but he also contributed ideas: the stress on visual documentation in Fug- ger’s collection and later in the Munich Kunstkammer and in Quiccheberg’s treatise was largely due to his influence. The Fugger circle also played a role in the introduction of the High Renaissance style into Germany, witness the Fuggerhaus at Donauwörth, built in the 1540s, in particular its pure, Vitru- vian decorative elements such as portals, chimneypieces and the Stübchen discussed in chapter 3.4 [Figs. 3.38–3.45]. Considering Strada’s close connec- tion with the Fuggers just at that time, he must have been the source of the Mantuan elements in their style, and an attribution to him of their design is perfectly plausible. Because of his wealth, his very wide contacts—including the Austrian Habsburgs and the Duke of Bavaria—and his political prominence first in Augsburg and later in Munich, Fugger was a natural ‘opinion leader’, witness the large number of books dedicated to him and the adoption of his ideas by the Duke of Bavaria. A similar natural role as an opinion leader was filled by Strada’s princely patrons, the Emperors Ferdinand i and Maximilian ii,