Seite - 626 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Band 2

Chapter ��6�6 part of his celebrated collection of antiquities. From the account Strada pre- sented to Duke Albrecht we know that he commissioned a set of drawings of what in the German translation of his account is called the ‘Schreibtisch’ of Cesare Gonzaga.103 The term Schreibtisch, literally ‘writing desk’, was proba- bly the translation of Strada’s ‘scrittoio’ or even ‘studiolo’. Both of these terms could refer to a piece of furniture having a more ample function than purely administrative and literary pursuits, often providing space for coins, gems, small antiques, naturalistic objects and other interesting or valuable collect- ibles. In this case the object in question doubtless was the sumptuous coin cabinet described by Vasari as the ‘studiolo fatto per le medaglie, il quale ha ottimamente d’ebano e d’avorio lavorato un Francesco da Volterra’.104 The fact that this object was made by a craftsman who was also a gifted architect sug- gests that it was closely akin to the later Stipo Farnese. It must have looked somewhat like the one documented in two drawings in the so-called Scholz Scrapbook in the Metropolitan Museum datable to the 1560s. These drawings 103 BHStA-LA 4853, fols. 16–20, published in Stockbauer 1874, pp. 34: ‘Um den abriss des Don Caesars Schreibtisch v 8’. 104 The description of Cesare Gonzaga’s stipo in Vasari-Milanesi 1906, vi, pp. 489–490. Figure ��.45 Flaminio Boulanger, the Stipo Farnese, conceived by Fulvio Orsini to house part of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese’s antiquities, 1578–1579; Ecouen, Musée de la Renaissance. Figure ��.46 Anonymous, drawing of a monumental cabinet, ca. 1560–1570; New York, Metropolitan Museum.