Seite - 48 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Band 1

Chapter �48 Giovanni Rinaldo, the son of his sister Elisabetta and the late Giovanni Donato Bolgaroni. He moreover determined that during Don Clemente’s life his sister and her son would retain the use of the house within Mantua, in the Contrada della Bue, which they were inhabiting at the time.7 Giovanni Rinaldo—or Rinaldo—took his mother’s name, and also his fa- ther appears to have used the name of De Strata. Though it was not unusual that—in default of male heirs—the name and arms of a given family were assumed by a daughter and her progeny, this still suggests that Gian Donato was of a lesser rank than his wife; it is, for instance, not impossible that Gian Donato was a converted Jew, related to the Bulgarini from Verona who later in the sixteenth century would likewise settle in Mantua.8 By 1514, when Simone della Strata made his testament, Gian Donato had died, and his son Rinaldo must already have married his first wife, who would become the mother of his eldest surviving son, Giacomo—or Jacopo, as he would consistently style himself—Strada.9 The date of Strada’s birth is not known with certainty; the only roughly con- temporary source is the cartouche in Titian’s 1567–1568 portrait of Strada. This cartouche was added at a later date, probably by Strada’s son or grandson (both called Ottavio), and gives the (mistaken) date of 1566 and Strada’s age as 51, which would establish the year of his birth as 1515.10 In view of the fact that Strada’s half-brothers were still minors after his father’s death in 1564, and that he himself was still begetting children in the late 1570s, this date is more likely than the year 1507 given by some secondary sources.11 From the acts in which Rinaldo’s widow, Antonia, in the name of her children, renewed the enfiteusi or lease of several plots of land held by her late husband (and by his cousin 7 ASMn, Notarile, Notary Ioan Benedetto de Cippi, 18 September 1513. I am very grateful to Daniela Ferrari to have helped me find and interpret this and other documents on Jacopo’s immediate ancestors. 8 cf. D’Arco, ms Delle famiglie mantovane, ii, p. 240 (as in note 1). 9 It should be noted that in his letters our protagonist regularly styled himself ‘Jacopo Stra- da’, only rarely ‘da Strada’ or ‘della Strada’, as he is referred to in some secondary literature. This also applies for his son and successor Ottavio, and even the latter’s progeny, though enrolled in the French nobility, seldom used the particule. 10 The inscription reads: Jacobus De Strada Civis Romanus Caess. Antiquarius Et Com. Belic. An: Aetat: Li: et C M.D. LXVI. On the portrait, see Wethey 1969–1975, ii, pp. 141–142, cat. nr. 100; an X-ray reproduced in Mucchi 1977, p. 302. Von Busch 1973, p. 214 and p. 356, n. 151 has already pointed out that the date 1566 is not necessarily wrong: though the painting of the portrait is documented in Niccolò Stopio’s correspondence of 1567–1568 it is pos- sible that  Strada visited Venice on his way back from Rome in 1566, and that it was begun on  that occasion. 11 F.T. Schulz 1938 (basing himself on Svatek 1883).