Seite - 521 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Band 1

521Other Patrons of Architecture asked Strada to provide plans and designs, especially from about 1568 onward, when his own house was sufficiently finished to show what he was capable of. We have few concrete data, but there is sufficient circumstantial evidence to support the hypothesis that Strada was directly involved in projects under- taken by four different patrons in Austria and Bohemia. The first and most prominent of these is Vilém z Rožmberk (1535–1592), perhaps the grandest nobleman of Bohemia and as Oberstburggraf of Prague one of the highest ranking officials in the kingdom [Fig. 10.7]. Strada had some contacts with him, as is clear from a letter of December 1573, mentioning that Strada had recently seen Rožmberk in Prague. He tells him that he is obliged to sell his house and library to be able to have his books printed, and offers it first to Rožmberk ‘as my gracious Lord and patron’; he tells Rožmberk that he will give him a better price than others, ‘because of your longstanding patron- age and the daily favours your grace grants me, equalled by no other Prince whomsoever’.8 Apart from a drawing of the complete relief on the shaft of Tra- jan’s Column in Rome which Strada had sold to Rožmberk and which is men- tioned in the letter, we do not know what was implied in this ‘Kundschaft’— that is ‘patronage’. The tone of Strada’s letter suggest that it had been no minor act of patron- age, and that idea is reinforced by the fact that Strada dedicated his 1575 edi- tion of Serlio’s Settimo Libro to Rožmberk [Figs. 10.8–10.9]. That in itself might suggest that Rožmberk had at one time employed him in his building projects, which Strada refers to in a rather general way, praising Rožmberk for the fishponds you have had dug, the most sumptuous palaces <…> you have had built, and in the first place that outstanding palace that, con- tracting two other large buildings into one, you had constructed on the castle of Prague itself’ [Fig. 10.10]. But Strada continues that he dedicates Serlio to Rožmberk, just because ‘at present I cannot myself serve your Excellency in this matter’—that is, archi- tecture—and he does not mention any concrete services in that field he might have provided earlier.9 If Strada had earlier provided designs for any major part 8 Doc. 1573-12-18: ‘als meinem gnedichen Herrn’; ‘von Wegen der alten Kundschaft unndt deglige Dienst die mir Euer Gnaden thuen, der kainem Firsten, er sey gleych wer er wel’. Strada had been in Prague quite recently, sometime in the autumn of the same year. 9 Serlio 1575, f. a ii verso: ‘<…> alios praeficit effodiendis piscinis: alios sumptuosissimis ae- dificiis (quibus impensè delectatur) erigendis, et in primis in palatio illo eximio, quod in ipsa arce Pragensi ex duobus alioqui magnis aedifcijs in unum coeuntibus, extruit. Qua in re quum Excellentia tuae praesens inservire ipse non possem, mitto, dono, ac dedico hunc septimum librum Sebastiani Serlij <…>’.