Seite - 138 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Band 1

Chapter 3138 well have provided Strada with further introductions to local society.51 Doubt- less Strada himself was attracted to Lyon by the antiquities of this old Roman colony as much as by the fame of the local printers. Strada planned his second sojourn in Lyon to be longer than the first: he left Nuremberg early in August 1552, after having obtained permission to live up to three years in Lyon without losing his Nuremberg citizenship, and having sold his household effects.52 He would remain in Lyon at least until the actual printing of the treatise, which was completed on 6 November 1553.53 This visit therefore afforded him ample opportunity to establish contacts with the lively humanist circle flourishing in this centre of the Pléiade. A good impression of the brilliance and cosmopolitanism of this circle in the years preceding Strada’s arrival is given in Jean-Claude Margolin’s article on Jean Visagier’s Epigramma- ta, a volume of poems recording the names of and dedicated to the members of what Visagier considered a sodalitium, an informal academy which included Rabelais, Etienne Dolet, the German scholar-printer Sebastien Gryphius, Mau- rice and Guillaume Scève and Louise Labé, to name only a few.54 Strada will have felt particularly at home because of Lyon’s traditional connections with Italy: the city counted a considerable number of Italian families among its pa- triciate, such as the Gondi and the Guadagni, and at the time its archbishop was Cardinal Ippolito d’Este. Moreover various individual Italian expatriates had made their home temporarily or permanently in Lyon. One of these was Fugger’s old acquaintance Ortensio Landi († 1560), a friend of Dolet who had worked as an editor in Gryphius’ workshop in 1534–1535, and who had visited Hans Jakob in Augsburg in 1544–45. So Strada must have known him person- ally, and through him could establish contacts with other Italians in Lyon, such as the humanist Gabriele Symeoni, the lawyer Giulio Calestano and, perhaps most illustrious, the architectural theorist Sebastiano Serlio.55 The intellec- tual life of the city was strongly stimulated by the presence of an impressive 51 On the Italian presence in Lyon, see Lyon et L’italie 1958; Lyon 16e 1993, p. 207 (bibliogra- phy). Willibald Imhoff was often in Lyon himself; his visit from 3 September until 23 De- cember 1550 possibly overlapped with Strada’s presence, that lasting from mid September 1552 until 7 January 1553 certainly did [Jante 1985, p. 21]. 52 Docs. 1552-07-26 and 1552-07-30. 53 As indicated in the colophon of the book. 54 Margolin 1974, using the second edition of Visagier’s collection: Ioannis Vulteii Remensis Epigrammatum libri iv, Lyon (Michel Parmentier) 1537. The existence of such a group of friends is documented elsewhere, as in Nicolas Bourbon De amicis lugdunensibus (1533). 55 On Lyons’s cosmopolitan society, see Renucci 1943; Romier 1949; Humanisme Lyonnais 1974; Rinascimento a Lione 1988; Lyon 16e 1993 (with extensive bibliography by Maria Te- resa Arizzoli Clementel on pp. 203–217); and Sebastiano Serlio a Lyon 2004. On Landi, see: Hartig 1917<a>, p. 217; Maasen 1922, p. 84; Grendler 1969, pp. 21–38; Costanzo Landi, conte