Seite - 221 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Band 1

221Tasks at the Imperial Court fantesey mache, auch auf underschidliche papier verfassen<...>’. This appears to indicate that the ceiling—it was a timber ‘Poden’, rather than a vault in ma- sonry (which would have been indicated with the term ‘Gewölb’)—consisted of diagonally placed square compartments, leaving space for smaller triangu- lar section along its margins (the ‘gespitzte Feldung’). This ceiling consisted of sixty-three of such compartments, and may have looked somewhat like the hypothetical reconstruction offered here [Fig. 4.12]. For each of these panels Pozzo was expected to invent a ‘fantasy’ and make a drawing of it on a separate sheet.65 When finished, Schallautzer and Pozzo were to negotiate a price for the execution of the paintings and the expense of the colours and the gilding, after which the painter was to be dispatched, taking his drawings with him, to the Emperor, who then could take his final decision. Pozzo appears to have had a ready imagination, if he could think out his scheme and conceive no less than sixty-three ‘Fantesey’ or inventions, within the two weeks at most at his disposal. This rather suggests that he was fore- warned, and of course it is perfectly possible that a project of such importance and of such long standing had been discussed informally beforehand. Cer- tainly the time was too short to produce sixty-three fully worked out designs for each of the fantasies: Pozzo therefore proposed to draw a limited number of views showing sections of the projected ceiling in which he sketched his proposed inventions for each compartment. Schallautzer agreed to this pro- posal on the condition that Pozzo would work out one of the compositions in a full-size drawing, ‘wie es ins werck sein soll’.66 Since Schallautzer uses the 65 A ceiling of a double square can be divided in forty-five diagonally placed square com- partments, which gives 14 triangles (each half the square compartments) at the margins and four larger triangles (two combined marginal triangles) in the corners, which adds up to sixty-three compartments in all. There appears to be no graphic documentation of the Goldener Saal before the mid-eighteenth century, but an (approximate) proportion of a double square for (the principal section of) the hall is not contradicted by the preserved plans (Felmayer / Oettinger / Scheicher 1986, pl. 48a). The ceiling was carried on carved stone corbels (‘geschnittne krackstain’): the number of compartments was later reduced, which could not have been done in the compartmented ceiling in carpentry typical of the German Renaissance, so it must have been either a flat timber ceiling—the most likely option—or possibly a light (slightly curved?) stucco ceiling hanging from the beams; ex- cept for the corbel-stones and the Imperial coat of arms in the central compartment, it included no carved or moulded elements: the gilding used was just gold-paint (‘ringilti- gen farben’) (JdKS 11, 1890, ii, p. ccxxii, Regest 7762, discussed below). 66 The text of the letter allows various interpretations: on the one hand it is possible that Pozzo did indeed produce sixty-three individual sheets, but that these were merely quick sketches, instead of detailed modelli in which the proposed shading was indicated in wash. On the other hand he may also have produced one large overview of the ceiling as a whole, in which each invention was sketched; but since his proposed inventions were