Seite - 29 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Band 1

29The Image—Or from Whom (Not?) to Buy a Second-Hand Car description of the Palazzo del Te published by Davari in 1889, of available data culled from the Munich sources, and of a comparison with Strada’s numismat- ic drawings and his designs for the Munich Antiquarium, Verheyen attributed the drawings to Strada himself. He also pointed out their crucial importance for a good understanding of the genesis and iconography of the Palazzo del Te and its decoration. Soon a discussion developed between him and the American architectural historians Kurt Forster and Richard Tuttle about a possible ideo- logical intent of the building, and about the reliability of Strada’s drawings.60 These drawings were not, however, in Strada’s own hand: he had merely commissioned them from the young Mantuan painter Ippolito Andreasi, as Renate von Busch demonstrated on the basis of an even more attentive read- ing of the available documents. In 1984 Richard Harprath catalogued them in his long article in Master Drawings on Ippolito Adreasi as a draughtsman.61 Some years later a selection of the drawings was shown in the large exhibition on Giulio Romano within the walls of the palace they documented, and they were used in the preparation of its restoration.62 They were moreover illus- trated in Amedeo Belluzzi splendid ‘atlas’ of the Palazzo del Te, two beauti- ful though unaffordable volumes illustrating the architecture and every single decorative element of this important complex. Belluzzi provided a transcrip- tion of Strada’s accompanying description and discussed both his acquisition of Giulio’s drawings and his commission of Andreasi’s designs.63 Meanwhile, in an article about later pictorial additions to Raphael’s Vatican Loggia, Bernice Davidson discussed the even more detailed and splendidly illuminated docu- mentary drawings of this other key monument of the history of the Renais- sance, which had been commissioned by Strada a decade before those of the Palazzo del Te.64 In 1617 Jacopo Strada’s grandson Ottavio ii published a volume of technical designs under his grandfather’s name. This book was first seriously discussed in an article on ‘plagiarists’ of Francesco di Giorgio Martini’s technical designs, published by Ladislao Reti in 1963. Until the discovery, by the French antiquar- ian booksellers Bernard and Stéphane Clavreuil, of a manuscript containing autograph drawings by Jacopo of similar technical inventions, these had only been known through some similar manuscripts prepared by Jacopo’s son, Ottavio i Strada, which were presented to various European princes. One of 60 Verheyen 1967; Forster / Tuttle 1971; Verheyen 1972(b). 61 Von Busch 1973, pp. 204–205 and p. 342.n. 90; Harprath 1984. 62 Giulio Romano 1989, pp. 333–334; 339; 342; 350, 357, 366; 400–402; 409–415. 63 Belluzzi 1998, pp. 30–36 and passim. 64 Davidson 1983, pp. 587–599 and passim.