Seite - 133 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Band 1

133In Hans Jakob Fugger’s Service the natural repositories of the smaller antiques, such as small bronzes, gems and coins. This was especially true for the Nuremberg goldsmiths, several of whom appear themselves to have owned cabinets of curiosities that stimu- lated similar activities on the part of their social superiors.42 Soon, however, Strada did not need to limit his acquisitions to the shops of his Nuremberg neighbours, since Fugger anticipated the advice that Quiccheberg gave in the second part of the Inscriptiones vel tituli: It is suitable that great lords have talented men at their disposal to send to various countries, in order to look for marvellous things <…>43 When Strada dedicated his edition of Caesar’s Commentaries of 1575 to Al- brecht v—the epistle as a whole is one long paean on the Munich Hofbib- liotek and Fugger’s fundamental role in its creation—he relates how he had been sent to Italy with the specific purpose of purchasing such ‘marvellous things’ for his patron’s cabinet.44 Though Strada’s travels probably were pri- marily intended as learned peregrinations, and the results of his study would find their way into the numismatic albums prepared for his patron, it may be assumed that Fugger expected some more immediate and concrete results in return for his capital outlay. That such results did indeed include the acquisi- tion of antiques—in particular of antique sculpture—is indicated by Fugger’s comment, in a letter to Niccolò Stopio of 1567 referring to Strada’s purchases: ‘<…> di quelle [= ‘anticaglie’] ne comprò in Roma già parecchi anni fa, me resto sattisfatto’.45 The wide range of Strada’s tasks can be best demonstrated by an account of the documented travels he made while in Fugger’s service, that is his trip to Lyon in about 1550, and his subsequent trip first to Lyon, and then to Rome in 1553–1555. These are of sufficient importance, also in view of Strada’s later career, to have a paragraph of their own. 42 In his A.A.A. Numismatωn Antiquorum Διασκευέ Strada refers repeatedly to various gold- smiths owning prize specimens of coin-types he described; see Jansen 1993a, pp. 219–220 and annex 1b, pp. 231–232. 43 Quiccheberg 1565, p. D ii r.: ‘Optimates in his colligendis decebit habere homines ingenio- sos quos ad diversas regiones mittant, inquirendarum rerum miraculosarum gratia <...>’. 44 Caesar 1575, p. * 4-r.: ‘Missus sum ab hinc annis 20. in Italiam, Romam, Venetias ac aliò ad numismata auro, argento, ac aere afformata, vetustateque insignia marmora comparan- da, quae ego magna vi pecuniarum expensa Augustam, nobilissimis spoliis exuta Italia, advexi. Sunt inter ea quàm plurima Imperatorum ac Imperatricum capita, multae insuper integrae marmoreae statuae, aliàque opera non minimi precii et pervetusta’. 45 ‘I am still quite satisfied with those [= antiquities] he bought for me in Rome several years ago’: Fugger to Stopio, 6 December 1567, BHStA-LA 4852, fol. 103v, as quoted in Von Busch 1973, p. 112; cf. below, Ch. 12.3.