Seite - 83 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Band 1

83Travel—Wenzel Jamnitzer inclination towards medals and antiquities’.33 He owed this inclination to his maternal grandfather and namesake, the celebrated humanist and close friend of Albrecht Dürer, Willibald Pirckheimer (1470–1530). In part directly, in part through his aunt, Imhoff inherited both the important library and the collection that his grandfather had brought together; the latter consisted of antique coins and sculpture and of contemporary works of art, and included many works by Dürer.34 During his visits to Imhoff’s studio, Strada doubtless did not limit his attention to the coins: he must also have got to know the large collection of prints and drawings Imhoff at that time was beginning to bring together. For this, he could build on the drawings and engravings his grandfa- ther had been given by Dürer himself, or had obtained from the artist’s widow after his death; these were already in Imhoff’s possession. Probably it was here that Strada began to appreciate Northern draughtsmanship, an appreciation which later expressed itself in the acquisition of a considerable quantity of the works of German and Netherlandish engravers, including Dürer and Lucas van Leyden.35 In any case his interest in the graphic arts was bound to be strongly stimulated in Nuremberg, which boasted a tradition going back to the splendid woodcuts of the illustrated Bible (1483) and the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493) pub- lished by Anton Koberger; the work of Dürer and his followers had established the town as the principal centre of printmaking in Germany. Understandably, local collectors attached great value to prints, and Quiccheberg praised them specifically for their activities in this field.36 2.5 Strada and Wenzel Jamnitzer Quiccheberg singled out one group of collectors that appears to have been par- ticularly in evidence in Nuremberg, the goldsmiths, with whom Strada would have felt some affinity because of his own early training in their craft. Several of them collected prints, which is understandable in view of the close rela- tionship between the two arts, and the practical use that prints were put to in their workshops. Stimulated by the example of artists such as the Augsburg 33 Quoted in Jante 1985, p. 18: ‘von erster jugent an aus angeporner art zw den medaylen und antiquiteten grosse naygung gehabt’. On Imhoff, see Von Busch 1973, pp. 99–102; Jante 1985. 34 On Pirckheimer, see Willibald Pirckheimer 1970; on his collection, see Pilz 1970; Johne 1981. 35 Shortly after his father’s death, Ottavio Strada attempted to sell some of this material to the Grandduke of Tuscany; for Strada’s collection, see below, Ch. 13.3. 36 Quiccheberg 1565, H i recto.