Seite - 17 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Band 1

17The Image—Or from Whom (Not?) to Buy a Second-Hand Car that Strada in 1566 would have been appointed ‘Aufseher’, supervisor of curator, of the Imperial Kunstkammer cannot be corroborated in the sources known at present: it is probable that it is in fact Schlager’s own interpretation of the title ‘Antiquarius’, which is used in the act he presumably cites.28 Standards of se- lection, transcription and interpretation of archival sources quickly improved, however. The most important results of this process soon found their way into a series of appendices to the Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorische Sammlungen des allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses, which began to be published in 1883, together with the Jahrbuch itself. These appendices presented a large quantity of impecca- bly edited sources relevant to the history of art in the Habsburg lands. The intelligent selection of materials was primarily intended to help establish the attributions, the provenance and the patronage situation of the works of art in the collections of the Austrian Emperors, i.e. basically what is now the Kun- sthistorisches Museum in Vienna. But it is obvious that it was also intended to provide the documentary basis for a more general history of the visual arts of the Habsburg Empire, including architecture, the applied arts and archaeol- ogy, with particular emphasis on the laudable role of the Habsburgs as gen- erous and discerning patrons. The documents published here first gave some substance to Strada’s role as antiquary to the Holy Roman Emperor. Until then nothing more was known about this role except the title he added to his name on the front page of the books he published and had inserted in the cartouche he had painted on his portrait. These documents—often simple records of the payment of his salary and his travel expenses, sometimes more informative documents such as letters or reports—do at least tell us when and how Strada came to the Imperial court and when and why he resigned, and provide us with some inkling of the type of activities in which he was employed.29 In Vienna the interest in Strada was perhaps stimulated by the discovery of a volume of drawings by Ottavio Strada in the library of Count Dietrichstein- Mensdorff, which contained elaborate designs for goldsmith’s work. These splendid drawings made a great impression: this was after all the period of the Great Exhibition, the foundation of the Victoria and Albert Museum and count- less other museums and vocational schools for the applied arts. To stimulate 28 Schlager 1850, pp. 674–675, 682, 760–761; the record referred to is probably Doc 1566-08-10. 29 JdKS 1883 and following years; the documents printed in the appendices are grouped ac- cording to their location, which include non-Austrian institutions such as the Gonzaga archive in Mantua. They are mostly published as brief summaries (Regeste), but often also in extenso; each Regest is identified by a running number. The tradition is unbroken, witness the publication of the inventory of the Kunstkammer of Rudolf ii (Bauer / Haupt 1976). It would be very useful if the material were reissued in a digital version with integral indexes.