Page - 861 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 2

861Agent of Change: Imperial Antiquary and Architect privileges and in the Index sive catalogus. The Index, in which all the ‘innova- tions’ listed above are represented, reflects the breadth of Strada’s ambition. Its intensity is indicated by the unrealistic megalomania of his project, by his perseverance in it against all odds, and by the huge portion of his patrimony he appears to have invested in it. The best indication for the sincerity of his ambi- tion, even his passion, is the increasingly despairing tone in his begging letters to potential sponsors of his projects. This despair is echoed in the dispositions of his testament, which shows him willing to largely sacrifice his children’s in- heritance in order to realize his projects at least posthumously. 16.5.9 The Effect of Strada’s Promotion of Intellectual and Artistic Innovations Strada’s desire to promote those intellectual and cultural phenomena he so highly prized himself, is sufficiently evident to ask the question in how far he was successful in this ambition. As Chapter 14 has made clear, his success as a publisher was marginal: most of his projects never came to fruition, and con- sequently his influence, if any, remained limited to a sphere allowing physical access to himself, his works and his collections. The only exceptions are his own Epitome thesauri antiquitatum, which was a bestseller and was soon re- printed in pirated editions, and Serlio’s Settimo Libro, which was a very useful part of the treatise, and henceforth reprinted continuously together with its other published volumes. But even if Strada’s influence remained limited to those with physical access to his collection and to himself, his influence must have been considerable, in view of his central position at the Imperial court, his continuous travels cover- ing a wide region, his very extensive network, and the status he derived from these. It is obvious that he directly influenced the projects in which he was himself involved as a designer, such as at the Munich Antiquarium and the Vienna Neugebäude, or as an advisor, such as the tomb of Emperor Maximil- ian i and the ceiling of the Goldene Saal in Innsbruck. Given that such advice was rarely documented, and that his material was accessible to his patrons and the artists they employed, it is not unreasonable to assume that other projects were likewise influenced by it. Good examples of such influence are the stucco ceilings in Archduke Ferdinand ii’s hunting lodge Hvězda in Prague, begun very soon after Strada’s personal visit to the Archduke in Prague, and those in the castle at Nelahozeves, commissioned in the mid-1560s by Emperor Fer- dinand’s counsellor, Florian Griespek von Griespach. Both reflect knowledge of Giulio Romano’s decorations, and appear to use iconography derived from antique coin-reverses: information that for Habsburg courtiers at that date was most easily accessible in Strada’s collection.