Seite - 303 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Band 1

303Imperial Architect: Background 86 The continuous appeal to learned gardeners of Cyrus’ garden and its quincunx pattern is exemplified by Sir Thomas Browne’s hermetic treatise, The Garden of Cyrus, or The Quin- cuncial Lozenge, or Network Plantations of the Ancients, naturally, artificially, mystically considered, London 1658. 87 Chmel 1840–1841, p. 276. I am grateful to Bernhard Schirg for help with the translation. 88 ibidem, p. 263: ‘Hac foecondissima plantandarum arborum ratione ab ipso Huetstokero Regi Maximiliano eposita, tantopere Rex delectatus est, ut citra moram huiusmiodiu Quincuncialem Seriem ex arboribus sylvestribus per universum Hortum ichoari iusserit’. according to a specific geometrical scheme or figure, the quincunx. This is the configuration of five points within a square or rectangle, four at the corners and one in the centre, for instance the way the number five is disposed on a die or a playing card. It is a scheme perfectly suited to repetitive applications such as the planting of a wood or orchard [Fig. 5.66–5.69].86 Tanner strongly emphasizes the geometrical and arithmetical aspect of the application of the quincunx to the garden, supplying all the measurements of the lay-out. It was probably no coincidence that it was Paul Fabricius, the court-mathematician, who provided the laudatory ‘Epigramma’, in fact a 22- line ode, preceding Tanner’s text: Struxit et ad ripam spatiosum fluminis \ hortum In quo QUINCUNCIS culta figura patet. Solus ibi QUINCVNX disponit in ordine \ plantas, Ponit et exiguo plura vireta loco.87 He also constructed a spacious garden at the \ river’s bank In which the elegant figure of the QUINCUNX \ stands out. There the QUINCUNX alone arranges the \ plants in order And adds green pavilions in a small space. This geometrical concern provides a parallel to Hvězda, where the house itself was designed using a geometrical figure based on the number six. Surely it is no coincidence that Ferdinand’s six-pointed star and Maximilian’s quincunx are both celebrated in poetic epigraphs emphasizing their patrons’ personal geo- metrical involvement? Moreover a case might be made that the ground plan of the Lusthaus itself foreshadowed the lay-out of the orchards in the quincunx system, for a cross inscribed in a square is itself an example of the quincunx. A plan such as is suggested by Cataneo [Fig. 5.56], where the central space is a courtyard or atrium—that is an open space corresponding to the four open spaces in the corners—makes that particularly clear. The choice of the quincunx for the lay-out of Maximilian’s orchards was not, however, his original invention. It had been suggested to him by Sebas- tian Huetstocker, who in his turn had been reminded of it by local humanists such as Joannes Ludovicus Brassicanus and the chancellor of Lower Austria, Marcus Beck von Leopoldsdorf.88 As true humanists they had found the idea in