Page - 854 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 2

Chapter 16854 Archduke Ferdinand ii of Tirol and Duke Albrecht v of Bavaria himself.34 Sev- eral of Strada’s aristocratic patrons—Vilém z Rožmberka, Jan Šembera z Bos- kovic, Reichard Strein von Schwarzenau and Christoph von Teuffenbach—fit the pattern of early adopters: of high social standing, highly educated, intel- lectual and cosmopolitan, they all adopted one or more of the innovations championed by Strada. A similar role as an innovator or early adopter of new forms can be assigned to Wenzel Jamnitzer: compared to his colleague goldsmiths in Nuremberg, he is relatively well-to-do, is at ease corresponding even with high-ranking pa- trons outside his home-town, is venturesome, is curious and has intellectual interests, witness his treatise on perspective. As a neighbour of Strada, he was moreover bound to have relatively more contact with at least this one ‘change agent’. From this point of view it comes as no surprise that Jamnitzer is one of the first goldsmiths in Nuremberg to adopt Italianate, classicist ornament, which may be credited at least in part to Strada’s influence. 16.5.6 Strada as a Change Agent If considered in his German habitus, Strada himself obviously can be consid- ered as an innovator or early adopter, since he too practiced all the innovations mentioned in his own work and his other activities. But if he is considered first and foremost as an Italian this is less obvious, for in that case these innovations were not quite so new, or not new at all. Therefore his position in the paradigm is closer to that of the external change agent than to that of the innovator. A change agent is ‘an individual who influences clients’ innovation decisions’ by introducing awareness of, and knowledge about a given innovation, and thus developing a need for, and creating an intent to change in the client, and help- ing him to translate that intent into action. ‘One main role of the change agent is to facilitate the flow of innovations from a change agency to an audience of clients.<…>Change agents usually possess a high degree of expertise regarding the innovations that are being diffused<…>As a bridge between two differing systems, the change agent is a marginal figure with one foot in each of two worlds’.35 This description seems to fit Strada like a glove. Likewise Rogers’ general- izations describing the change agent’s contacts with clients can be applied to 34 Ferdinand i can be considered an innovator, or at least an early adopter, because of his quite early interest in architecture and decoration in the antique manner, as described abov, Ch. 5.2.1 and cf. Holzschuh-Hofer 2010. 35 This is a very summary paraphrase of the change agent’s roles as defined by Rogers 2003, Ch. 9, in particular pp. 366 and 368–369.