Seite - 374 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Band 1

Chapter 7374 In Vienna I have seen his house, which is as yet unfinished and consists of two wings [‘truoti’], and the Lord knows when he will finish it, having begun first with a facade in the Italian manner; it stands in a retired spot within the city walls’.15 So Strada’s house was located within the city walls in a backwater, a description which fits its location, at the end of street which was a cul-de-sac, closed of by the huge bulk of the Löwelbastei. The site of the house fronted on three sides towards the streets, the Vordere and the Hintere Schenkenstrasse and the nar- row cross-street which connected these two, which ran along the inside of the huge bastion.16 The word ‘truoti’, which does not exist in Italian, is most likely a Germanism from the word ‘Trakt’, the wing of a building, which would indicate that at that time Strada’s house consisted of two wings. The principal part of the house was built on top of vaulted cellars, doubtless at least in part relics from the earlier house on the site, and in addition Strada disposed of some workshops in a neighbouring building, where he had restored the antiquities he had acquired in Venice on behalf of the Duke of Bavaria under his own immediate supervision.17 15 DOC. 1567-12-06: ‘Io ho visto in Vienna casa sua non finita di duoi truoti, et Iddio sa quan- do la finira poi esser principiata duna facciata alla italiana et sta dentro i muri, in loco ritirato<...>’. 16 In Wolmut’s town plan of 1547 the house stretches all the way to the Bastei, but in 1550 part of this had been expropriated and torn down for improvements to the bastion, and doubtless also to allow an uninterrupted communication along the inside of the town- walls (Harrer 1957, vii, pp. 196–198). 17 Strada to Hans Jakob Fugger, Vienna, 1 March 1574 (DOC. 1574-03-01). Figure 7.7 Werner Arnold Steinhausen, plan of Vienna, 1710, detail. Figure 7.8 Photograph of the former Strada house, shortly before its demolition.