Page - 873 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 2

873Agent of Change: Imperial Antiquary and Architect bad buys, showing Fugger that Stopio possessed neither the necessary exper- tise, nor any comprehension of the ambitions in Munich.57 And though Strada did make the Duke pay high prices, those were the prices he had to pay to the owners from whom he bought. As an agent of the Duke of Bavaria he felt it due to exercise by proxy such princely virtues as ‘magnificence’ and ‘liberality’: it is no coincidence that in his jubilant description of the Munich collections Strada stressed the ‘great pains and expense of money’ it had cost to acquire Fugger’s coins and other antiquities, and that the Duke had spent ‘thousands of ducats’ in the acquisition of the Loredan collection.58 Strada would be the last person to be proud of having bought something at a bargain. About the quality of Strada’s acquisitions his patrons never complained: Fugger himself made quite clear to Stopio that he was still quite content with the antiquities Strada had bought for him in Rome in the 1550s, and though few of the objects acquired by Strada for Munich can be identified with certainty, the holdings of the Munich Antiquarium give some impression of its relative quality. Thus there are no concrete indications that Strada had ever in any way de- frauded his patrons: in fact for over two decades Fugger and afterwards the Duke of Bavaria trusted him sufficiently to buy huge quantities of ancient coins, statues and other antiquities, jewels, books, manuscripts and contempo- rary works art from him or through his mediation. Likewise none of his other patrons ever seem to have doubted his bona-fides. In view of Strada’s activities, his interests, his ambitions as sketched in this study, I think it is legitimate to conclude that Pope-Hennessy’s and—in his wake—Agosto Gentili’s negative interpretations of the Titian portrait are unwarranted and do justice neither to its sitter nor to its painter’s intentions. L.D. — Gotha, 5 March 2018 57 Early in 1574 Strada heard from an unnamed gentleman that the Duke had complained about him (‘che Sua Excellenza si duolga di me, et che mi tenghi in poca sua gratia’), but without being told what could have caused that, except a suspicion that Strada would have kept objects belonging to the Duke for himself. In a letter to Fugger which sounds sincere (Doc. 1574-03-01) Strada asks him to confirm how carefully and honestly he had negotiated in the Duke’s business, which implies that he must have known that some rumours as to his dealing were circulating. Examples of Stopio’s bad buys are discussed in Von Busch 1973, pp. 141–142 and 151–152. 58 Caesar 1575, f *4r.–*4v.