Seite - 229 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Band 1

229Tasks at the Imperial Court ancient sculpture and coins, that everyone could be easily recognized and the whole story and plot be understood from the ornaments and trappings.76 Both Stanghellino’s reference to the armour ‘all’antica Romana’ and the sourc- es for the designs mentioned by Pighius strongly suggest that Strada had been involved in the preparations of the festivities by virtue of his antiquarian knowledge and his collection of visual documentation of many aspects of An- tiquity, including ample material on the warfare of the Romans. Stanghellino’s formula, ‘Il Strada nostro Mantovano, come antiquario’ [italics mine] even suggests that such was considered a natural component of his function at court. Stanghellino explicitly says that Strada was given the charge to have made [‘far fare’] the costumes for this festival. This suggests not necessarily the mak- ing of all the individual designs, but rather the organizing and supervising of both the designing and the manufacturing process of the costumes and per- haps the decorations. The relatively brief time in which such festivities were organized in general, and the scale of this entertainment in particular suggest that all available intellectual, literary, musical and artistic talent was recruited to participate in the preparations.77 It is doubtful that there was one single ‘author’ or director of the festival, providing both the argument and a detailed planning of the iconography. It is much more likely that it was prepared by a commission reuniting the various competences, and presided over by a high- ranking courtier (such as the Master of the Horse) or perhaps even one of the members of the dynasty (in this case Archduke Ernest is the most obvious can- didate). As expert antiquary Strada would have had a voice in this commission, as would have other artists (such as Giuseppe Arcimboldo), literati (such as Giovanni Battista Fonteo) and musicians (such as Philippe de Monte) who had ample experience with similar commissions. And then one should count in the Imperial Heralds, the Gentlemen of the Imperial Chamber and Stable and 76 Venturini 2002, p. 222, nr. 104: ‘Comparvero gli eccellentissimi duchi di Baviera con livrea carmosina e bianca, di broccato et velluto, superbamente guarniti e benissi- mi accompagnati, con il motto Tempus edax rerum’; Pighius 1587, p. 188; Lindell 1988, p. 347; translation taken from Kaufmann 2010, pp. 183–185. 77 On 3 September Stanghellino reports to Duke Guglielmo from Vienna that ‘at present nobody thinks of anything else but to prepare arms and horses, costumes and liveries, for the occasion of these festivities, having already forwarded [to Pressburg] artillery, muni- tions and everything necessary for the settings [“apparecchio”] of the wooden city they are planning, as I have written earlier<...>’ (Venturini 2002, p. 221, nr. 102). A similar point is made in Larsson 2000.