Seite - 95 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Band 1

95Travel—Wenzel Jamnitzer Tirol had commissioned this from Jamnitzer in 1556, just after Strada’s return to Nuremberg from his travels to Lyon and Rome.57 At the time Jamnitzer was fully occupied with some commissions from the Archduke’s elder brother, Archduke Maximilian, King of Bohemia, and suggested that meanwhile some ‘kunstlichen Maler’, or ‘artful painter’, could execute one or more designs (‘Visierungen’) for the Archduke’s project. For this job he proposed Strada, whose letter to the Archduke on this account he enclosed with his own.58 Strada’s letter provides a detailed impression of his own conception of his task: he maintained that for such a large piece of work a single drawing was not sufficient. First, it was necessary to be informed in detail about the Arch- duke’s own wishes, after which it would be possible to prepare a detailed de- sign; in fact the best thing would be to prepare a three-dimensional model, to which the several masters charged with the execution could be referred.59 A well-considered iconography, closely following Holy Scripture, was of great importance, and special care should be taken about the relative proportions of the various parts, in particular the many ‘geschmelzte Thierlein’, little animals cast in silver, that were intended to inhabit this splendid representation of the Garden of Eden. It was, moreover, essential that the Archduke would appoint some expert ‘sopradicapo’ or superintendent to coordinate and supervise the eventual execution. Strada was obviously quite prepared to take on that job, on the condition that he would be charged with the work as a whole, and that he would be subordinated to no one but the Archduke himself. This letter has been interpreted as an attempt to oust Jamnitzer as a de- signer of the piece, a suggestion that is not warranted by the text.60 After all, it was Jamnitzer himself who proposed Strada to provide designs, which implies that he did not object to leave the supervision at least of the visual appearance of the work to his one-time neighbour. Apart from providing the actual design and a model of the piece, Strada considered himself capable of conceiving its iconographical programme; his letter to the Archduke should be read not as an attempt to oust Jamnitzer as a designer, but as an attempt to avoid having to deal with some court-official instead of discussing his proposals with the 57 Docs. 1556-12-22(a); 1556-12-22(b); 1557-01-07; 1557-01-26; 1557-01-27; see Schönherr 1888; Hayward 1976, pp. 46–48. 58 Docs. 1556-12-22(a); 1556-12-22(b). 59 Jamnitzer himself habitually prepared models of individual parts of his more important commissions (Wenzel Jamnitzer 1985, pp. 405–419), such as the wooden model for the Mutter Erde supporting the dish in the Merkelsche Tafelaufsatz (ivi pp. 406–408, cat. nr. 502) and figures and decorative parts for the Descalzas Reales reliquary (Pechstein 1966, pp. 270–274). 60 This reading proposed in Schönherr 1888 and Hayward 1976, p. 46.