Seite - 364 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Band 1

Chapter 6364 pockets the damage caused by their negligence; but they concluded that this was impracticable ‘dieweil aber dieselben nunmer weiter nit vorhanden’, that is, because they were no longer available. This was certainly true for the Bausuperintent Thomas Eiseler and the master masons Antonio Continelli, Bernhard de Camatha and Hanns Reckhendorfer, who all had died by 1577; but it was not true for Pietro Ferrabosco and for Jacopo Strada, both at the time still in Imperial service. In his essay on the Stallburg Harry Kühnel excluded both Ferrabosco and Strada as its supervising architect on the basis of this informa- tion.38 This may be true for Ferrabosco, whose intensive activity as a super- vising, executive architect is quite well documented. But it cannot be upheld for Strada, who is never mentioned in such a capacity in the Vienna sources. Though Strada certainly was capable of making architectural designs, it is not certain that he possessed the technical know-how for supervising the actual construction work (as opposed to the execution of decorative work, such as painting, stucco and sculpture, in which he was competent, being trained as an artist and a goldsmith).39 As Hilda Lietzmann has indicated, he would not have been among the masters considered liable for the defects in its execution, and he remains therefore a serious candidate for the design of the Stallburg. There is, moreover, another positive argument which links the design of the Stallburg to Mantua, and thus to Strada. This is a stylistic detail: the blocks placed in the frieze above each pilaster and prolonging it vertically, thus connecting the orders of the three levels. This is a rare motif already used, for instance, by Giuliano da Sangallo in the ground floor of his palace for the Flo- rentine chancellor Bartolommeo Scala from the mid 1470s [Fig. 6.35]. More sig- nificant in this context, it was used in exactly the same way as in Vienna in the lower entablature of a house at Via Carlo Poma 22 in Mantua [Fig. 6.36]. This dates from the mid-sixteenth century and is traditionally attributed to Strada’s exact contemporary and associate, Giovanni Battista Bertani.40 Even if we accept that Strada was the guiding spirit of the Stallburg project, on the basis of the information we have at present it remains impossible to 38 Holzschuh-Hofer/Grün 2014, pp. 296–297; Kühnel 1956, pp. 216–218. Ferrabosco himself was the one surviving master engaged in the building of the Stallburg from the beginning; Holzschuh-Hofer plausibly argues that he was not asked to reimburse the costs of the repairs because of his high standing; but it may also may indicate that he had not been responsible for the relevant part of the design and its execution, and liability would have remained with the contractors, the carpenters who had constructed the roof, or the tilers who had covered it. 39 It may be argued that Strada supervised the building of his own house himself, but even that is not sure; in any case the scale of that project was more modest than the Stallburg (cf. below). 40 Perina/ Pellati 1967; Carpeggiani 1992, pp. 95–96 (who does not accept the traditional at- tribution to Bertani).