Seite - 639 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Band 2

639Visual Documentation Vienna attending the wedding festivities of Archduke Charles in 1570. Ottavio obviously was well aware of Visconti’s close relationship with Duke Wilhelm V of Bavaria, for whom he arranged extensive acquisitions of antiquities and contemporary works of art from Italy.23 Besides some examples of his own industry, Ottavio offered to Visconti several volumes of drawings and prints, which he described as follows: Two large books bound with gold, on paper of medium size; in the one are the greater part of the printed designs of that great master Alberto Durero, both the copper engravings, and the woodcuts, and they are 216 pieces; and these are all early impressions. In the other book are 300 pieces of designs of those ancient masters such as Michel Angelo, Raphael Urbino, Francisco Parmesano [= Parmi- gianino], Julio Romano, Luca d’Holanda [= Lucas van Leyden], and other great masters, things of a kind which these days can no more be found for sale. Then there is also the Porton of Albert Durero [= Dürer’s Ehrenpforte], in which are engraved the exploits of the Emperor Maximilian i. Another book made by hand, in which there are 300 pieces of designs of these great masters that are mentioned above, in their own hand.24 It can be assumed that the album of Dürer prints is identical with the one Otta- vio earlier had offered to the Grand Duke and to Duke Virginio. From the con- text it is clear that the first group of three hundred ‘disegni’ by Italian masters, which was bound as a companion piece to the Dürer engravings and woodcuts, likewise consisted of prints, which Strada will have collected both during his stay in Rome in the 1550s and afterwards. The second group, consisting of three hundred autograph drawings of these same masters which were bound in a similar album, I think must have been part of the drawings that had remained in Vienna, and to which Ottavio had referred in his earlier letters to the Grand 23 asf, Medici del Principato 825, fol. 318; on Visconti, see Simonsfeld 1902. 24 ‘Dui libri grandi ligati con ori [sic], in carta mediana; in el uno sonno li maggior parte delli disegni stampati di quel valenthuomo Alberto Durero, cusì quelli in rame, come quelli in legno, et sonno da 216 pezzi; et tutti sonno delle prime stampe. Nel altro libro sonno da 300 pezzi di disegni di quelli maestri antichi come di Michel Angelo, Raphael Urbino, Francisco Parmesano, Julio Romano, Luca d’Holanda, et altri gran Valenthuomini, non trovandoli per questi tempi più di comprare simil cose. Ciè ancora il Porton di Alberto Durero, dove sciso sonno i fatti di Maximiliano I Imperatore. Un altro libro fatto a mano, in el qual sonno da 300 pezzi di disegni di quelli Valenthuomini et loro proprio mani, come di sopra sonno nominati’.