Seite - 24 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Band 1

Introduction24 Some of Svátek’s contentions would be repeated in Czech literature even when of a purely scholarly kind. Some authors added their own presumptions, such as Antonín Truhlář, a professor at the famous Prague academic gymna- sium. In its library he had found a copy of the history of the Dutch Revolt by the famous Jesuit historian Famiano Strada, on which he published a short note ‘On the Genealogy of the Strada von Rosberg’ in which he asserts that Famiano (born in Rome in 1572) were a grandson of ‘the elder Strada’, that is, of Jacopo Strada.45 Some of Svátek’s contentions also reappear, again with- out documentary corroboration, in Cyril Straka’s reasonably detailed survey of the activities of both Jacopo and Ottavio Strada of 1916. This was valuable nonetheless, because Straka had taken the trouble to examine most of their printed and manuscript works, of which he includes a summary discussion. He pays particular attention to the album in his own care as librarian of the Stra- hov monastery at Prague. A similar survey by Eugen Jaroslav Schulz, stressing Jacopo and Ottavio’s numismatic work, dates from 1950, but for its historical underpinning it still leans largely on Svátek and Straka.46 Since they were writ- ten in Czech, the information in these articles was in general ignored by later authors. 0.8 A (Very) Modest Place in the History of Classical Scholarship Schulz was a numismatist and his article appeared in a Czech numismatic periodical. It is clear that Strada’s work was interesting to the modern numis- matist as a modest chapter in the history of his discipline, rather than for any light it might shed on actual questions. Unlike great minds such as Scaliger and Lipsius, Strada did not contribute substantially to the development of classical history, and he rarely figures in the history of classical scholarship: his standing can be measured by the two dismissive sentences he receives in Eric Cochrane’s five hundred-page Historians and historiography in the Italian Renaissance, where he is merely mentioned as an Italian scholar employed to Svátek’s work (p. 56). The painting by Brožík illustrated served as frontispiece and was briefly described in the preface. I have not been able to establish its present location. 45 Truhlář 1883, p. 421; it was published in the same volume of Sborník Historický as Svátek’s essay. Though the contention is repeated from time to time, it is without foundation. Other Czech authors from this period paid attention to Strada: Rybička/Zub 1884; Salaba 1902(1903). 46 Straka 1916; Schulz 1950.