Seite - 630 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Band 2

Chapter 13630 The first two items comprise woodcuts and engravings partly bound together or organized in albums of blank sheets, partly preserved unbound in a wooden box. The ‘big book’, is probably a copy of the 1550 edition of Sebastian Münster’s Cosmographia; the ‘fortresses’ refer either to the town-views—such as that of Vienna—included in it [Figs. 13.1–13.2], or to a set of additional images collect- ed elsewhere that had been inserted into it. The book about architecture can be any recent architectural treatise, most likely one of the many editions of Serlio. These items represent what must be a small supernumerary section of per- haps the most important and influential part of Strada’s Musaeum, his col- lection of visual documentation. In contrast to the collection of paintings, of which he appears to have been ready to sell a substantial, if not the major part, from his collection of graphic material he only offered prints and illustrated printed books: such non-exclusive material probably consisted of doubles from his own collection or were even part of his regular stock as a bookseller. They do, however, represent themes that we know to have been close to his heart and which were well represented in his Musaeum: contemporary graphic art, topography and architecture. In the following I will recapitulate the gen- esis of Strada’s collection of graphic material, and attempt a partial charac- terization on the basis of the scanty documents that are relevant. This survey will consist of two parts: one devoted to Strada’s acquisition of quantities of existing drawings by some of the principal artists and architects of the Italian Renaissance, and one to his purposeful commission of documentary drawings of both ancient and contemporary monuments. 13.2 Strada’s Acquisition of Drawings As has been related in Chapter 3.8, on his travels in the mid-1550s Strada could acquire a vast quantity of drawings of some of the most esteemed masters of Figures 13.1–13.2 Sebastian Münster, Cosmographiae universalis Libri vi, title page of the Latin edition, Basle 1550 and View of Vienna, woodcut from from the German edition.