Jacopo Strada

Portrait of Jacopo de Strada
Titian , 1567/68
Oil on canvas
125 x 195 cm
Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna

Jacopo Strada (* 1507 in Mantua , † 1588 in Prague ) was an Italian scholar, courtier , painter , architect , goldsmith , numismatist , writer, editor and art collector. In addition, he was an inventor of waterworks and other machines.

Life

He had been married to Ottilia Schenk from Posberg in Franconia since 1544 . Since 1546 he lived in Nuremberg and received citizenship in 1549 . He was in the service of the Augsburg patrician, humanist and great book collector Johann Jakob Fugger and completed art purchases as an agent in Italy, where he also carried out extensive studies of antiquity and ancient and contemporary buildings (Raphael's Loggias in the Vatican, Giulio Romano's Palazzo del Té in Mantua, the Trajan's Column in Rome) documented or had documented.

Around the middle of the 16th century, Fugger commissioned a comprehensive, systematic-hierarchical, geographical-political and chronological collection of coats of arms of Italian aristocratic houses connected with the history of Italy. Jacopo Strada, antiquarian in Mantua, compiled these coats of arms. Carefully and magnificently painted with gold, silver and bright opaque colors, they fill fifteen beautifully bound folio volumes, a compendium of territorial and personal interrelationships in Italy in the Middle Ages and early modern times.

Around 1550 he began (according to the title page) to make large-format drawings based on ancient coins, each of which was recorded individually on a folio sheet. These drawings later came from Fugger's possession to Munich and were bound in 30 volumes for Albrecht V of Bavaria around 1570 , 29 of which are still preserved in the Gotha Research Library under the title Magnum ac Novum Opus . Other, similar volumes with coin drawings can be found in Vienna, Prague, Paris and London. In addition, descriptions of a large number of these drawings have been preserved in 11 volumes (so-called diaskeuè ), which are now in the University Library in Vienna and a copy in Prague.

From 1551 to 1553 Strada stayed in Lyon, where he cooperated with the antiquarian Guillaume Du Choul and met Sebastiano Serlio , from whom he acquired the preparatory materials for his "Seventh Book", which he then published in 1575. In Lyon at the end of 1553, Strada's Epitome Thesauri Antiquitatum , a so-called "portrait book" with the biographies of the Roman emperors and their family members, illustrated with small drawings based on ancient coins. After the book went to print, Strada traveled to Rome in 1553 and became a member of the "eruditissima academia", which met almost every day in the Palazzo Farnese to discuss topics from ancient culture. According to Strada, representatives from 20 specialist fields or professions took part in these meetings, including well-known scholars such as Antonio Agustín, Bernardino Maffei or Ottavio Pantagato.In Rome, Strada not only had further drawings made based on ancient coins, but also a color documentation of the Raphael's loggias in the Papal Palace of the Vatican. He also commissioned a documentation of the Palazzo del Tè in Mantua and appears to have been involved in a new recording of the reliefs of the Trajan Column . In addition, the architecturally versed Strada seems to have had contact with Roman architects such as Antonio Labacco and Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola , as drawings by these three architects have been preserved in a Vatican codex.

From 1556 he stayed in Vienna as court antiquarius , art expert and administrator of the imperial treasury , as well as architect for Emperor Ferdinand I and worked on the expansion of the Hofburg . (In the Greek title pages of his drawings based on ancient coins from the Greek-speaking area, he translates the title "Antiquarius" with "Archaiologos", making him the first in modern times to describe himself as an "archaeologist".) During these years he acquired a House in downtown Vienna (today Bankgasse 10) that he owned until his death. Presumably from this time in Vienna there are also other volumes with drawings and manuscripts of Strada in the Austrian National Library, Vienna, including approx. 120 drawings based on antique portrait busts and a volume with 174 drawings based on ancient statues (so-called Codex Miniatus 21).

In 1557 Strada published two works by Onofrio Panvinios in Venice, the Fasti et Triumphi an extensive commentary on the Fasti Capitolini found in the Roman Forum in 1546 , as well as the Epitome Pontificum Romanorum , a history of the popes. Due to incorrect ties and various changes, however, they aroused the anger of the author, so that Antonio Agustín, who presumably had given Strada the manuscripts of his friend and pupil Panvinio, had to mediate between him and Strada. Panvinio then published the same writings again in a modified form in 1558.

In 1566 he traveled to the Bavarian Duke Albrecht V and helped him build up his sculpture collection, which is still displayed in the Antiquarium of the Munich Residence. He provided important ideas and plans for this collection building, which was erected from 1568 onwards. The library, also largely based on Fugger's collection, was housed on the upper floor. The Antiquarium is likely to have been the first building north of the Alps dedicated to an extensive collection and probably the largest of its kind in Europe at the time.

His portrait, painted by Titian in 1567/1568 , shows the art collector. It came into the possession of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria and is now part of the painting collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. It is said that the Venetian artist Marietta Robusti (1554 / 55–1590), daughter of Tintoretto , portrayed him around the same time .

Antiquarium of the Munich Residence

In 1564 he worked as a court counterparty under Maximilian II. He received clothing money from the emperor so that he could stay at hof the bas . In 1568 in Vienna, Simmering, he delivered the design for the Neugebude Castle . He orientated himself on Northern Italian villas and French royal and garden castles, but probably also on Hadrian's Villa in Tivoli near Rome and the Diocletian's Palace in Split / Spalato.

From 1571–1574 he wrote a directory of ancient writings and a lexicon for eleven languages ​​in Vienna. For Bučovice Castle near Brno , he submitted designs to the client Jan Šember von Boskovic.

In 1574 his wife Ottilia died after 30 years of marriage. In the same year, on December 27, 1574, he was raised to the nobility . In 1575 he had his house demolished and a new building built, in which he housed his library of over 3,000 volumes and the sizeable "arts chamber" . He owned the building, in which he occasionally quartered guests of the imperial court, until his death. The "Palais Strada" was one of the most remarkable architectural monuments of the Viennese late Renaissance. In 1875, when the Vienna Burgtheater was being built , it had to be demolished.

In 1575 Strada published the Seventh Book of Sebastiano Serlios' Architectural Treatise, the manuscript of which he had acquired from Serlio in Lyon in the early 1550s. Also in 1575 he published Julius Caesar's Commentari with four commentaries by contemporary scholars and an appendix with hundreds of ancient inscriptions from Spain.

Emperor Rudolph II brought both Stradas, father and son Octavio, to the Prague court immediately after his accession to the throne and entrusted him with a variety of tasks, not least because he had made Octavio's daughter Katharina his mistress. The emperor could not marry Katharina, although she had borne him six children. Strada published several works that satisfied the imperial desire for dignity and veneration of ancestors. The epitome thesauri antiquitatum, hoc est, impp. Rome. Orientalium & Occidentalium Iconum, ex antiquis Numismatibus quam fidelissime deliniatarum, ex Musaeo Iacobi de Strada Mantuani Antiquarii (1553, Lyon ), a history of the emperors from Julius Caesar to Maximilian II based on their representation on coins, which was in Lyon at the same time in French and later was published several times by Conrad Gesner in Zurich.

Jacopo della Strada died in Prague and was buried in the St. Nicholas Church on Prague's Lesser Town .

Son Octavio (1550-1607) succeeded his father in the imperial favor. He was also very educated and worked as a historian. He wrote a Keyser Chronick .

literature

• Felix Czeike : Historisches Lexikon Wien, Vol. 5, S 359 , Vienna 1997, ISBN 3-218-00547-7
• Dirk Jacob Jansen: Jacopo Strada et le commerce d'art , in: Revue de l'art 77 (1987), pp. 11-21.
• Dirk Jacob Jansen: Taste and thought. Jacopo Strada and the development of a cosmopolitan court , in: Lubomír Konečný, Štěpán Vácha (eds.), Hans von Aachen in context, Prague 2012, pp. 171–178.
• Dirk Jacob Jansen: Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at The Imperial Court. The Antique as Innovation . Leiden 2019 Brill Open Access
• Volker Heenes: Jacopo Strada - Goldschmidt and painter, antiques and coin dealer, collector and antiquarian Caesarius , in: Vorwelten und Vorzeiten. Archeology as a Mirror of Historical Consciousness in the Early Modern Age , ed. by Dietrich Hakelberg - Ingo Wiwjorra (= Wolfenbütteler Forschungen 124), Wiesbaden 2010, pp. 295-310. ISBN 978-3-447-06295-4
• Frank Huss: Prince Joseph Friedrich von Sachsen-Hildburghausen , the "heir" of Prince Eugen , S 95 "Palais Strada", Vienna 2005. ISBN 3-200-00485-1
• Hilda Lietzmann : The imperial antiquarian Jacopo Strada and Elector August von Sachsen , in: Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 60 (1997), pp. 377-400.
• Francesca Mattei:  Strada, Jacopo. In: Raffaele Romanelli (ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 94:  Stampa – Tarantelli. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 2019.
• Egon Verheyen: Jacopo Strada's Mantuan Drawings of 1567-1568 , in: The Art Bulletin 49.1 (March 1967), pp. 62-70.
• Martin Warnke, court artist , DUMONT 1985. ISBN 3-7701-3847-3

Web links

Commons : Jacopo Strada  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Short biography as part of Artisti Italiani in Austria with a detailed bibliography

Individual evidence

1. ^ National Central Library of Rome: Epitome Pontificum Romanorum a S. Petro usque ad Paulum 4. Gestorum videlicet electionìsque singulorum, & conclauium compendiaria narratio. Cardinalium item nomina, dignitatum tituli, insignia legationes, patria & obitus. Onuphrio Panuinio Veronensi f. augustiniano authore. Ex Musaeo Iacobi Stradae Mantuani, ciuis Romani, antiq . impensis Iacobi Stradae Mantuani, 1557 ( archive.org [accessed August 28, 2020]).
2. ↑ Alessandrina Library: Fasti et triumphi Rome. a Romulo rege vsque ad Carolum 5. Cæs. Aug. siue epitome regum, consulum, dictatorum, magistror. equitum, tribunorum militum consulari potestate, censorum, impp. & aliorum magistratuum Roman. cum orientalium tum occidentalium, ex antiquitatum monumentis maxima cum fide ac diligentia desumpta. Onuphrio Pan . impensis Iacobi Stradæ Mantuani, 1557 ( archive.org [accessed August 28, 2020]).
3. ↑ Dirk Jacob Jansen: Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at The Imperial Court (2 Vols.): The Antique as Innovation . Brill, 2019, ISBN 978-90-04-35949-9 , pp. passim ( brill.com [accessed August 28, 2020]).
4. ↑ Alessandrina Library: Fasti et triumphi Rome. a Romulo rege vsque ad Carolum 5. Cæs. Aug. siue epitome regum, consulum, dictatorum, magistror. equitum, tribunorum militum consulari potestate, censorum, impp. & aliorum magistratuum Roman. cum orientalium tum occidentalium, ex antiquitatum monumentis maxima cum fide ac diligentia desumpta. Onuphrio Pan . impensis Iacobi Stradæ Mantuani, 1557 ( archive.org [accessed August 28, 2020]).
5. ^ National Central Library of Rome: Epitome Pontificum Romanorum a S. Petro usque ad Paulum 4. Gestorum videlicet electionìsque singulorum, & conclauium compendiaria narratio. Cardinalium item nomina, dignitatum tituli, insignia legationes, patria & obitus. Onuphrio Panuinio Veronensi f. augustiniano authore. Ex Musaeo Iacobi Stradae Mantuani, ciuis Romani, antiq . impensis Iacobi Stradae Mantuani, 1557 ( archive.org [accessed August 28, 2020]).
6. ^ National Central Library of Rome: Onuphrii Panuinii Veronensis ... De ludis saecularibus liber . in Officina Erasmiana, apud Vincentium Valgrisium, 1558 ( archive.org [accessed August 28, 2020]).
7. ↑ Getty Research Institute: Onvphrii Panvinii veronensis fratris Eremitae Avgvstiniani Reipvblicae romanae commentariorum libri tres: et alia quaedam quorum seriem sequens pagella indicabit . Venetiis: Ex officina Erasmiana apud Vincentium Valgrisium, 1558 ( archive.org [accessed August 28, 2020]).