New publication: Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court: The Antique as Innovation
This book by Dirk Jacob Jansen traces the career of Jacopo Strada (Mantua 1515-Vienna 1588), examining his role at court in Vienna, where he served as Imperial architect and antiquary. Strada’s career was unusually wide in scope and cosmopolitan in outlook even for a Renaissance artist.
Moving from Augsburg and Munich to Vienna, Strada worked with numerous colleagues and enjoyed the patronage of Hans Jakob Fugger and Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria before pursuing a connection with the imperial court. Strada took part in numerous projects of Ferdinand I and Maximilian II, including the Stallburg and the Neugebäude. At the heart of Strada’s endeavours, we find his “Musaeum”, consisting of a library and a huge collection of visual documentation of Antiquity and of the most advanced Italian art of his own time. Dirk Jansen’s meticulous study, the outcome of decades of research, reconstructs Strada’s world and underlines his active role in the transmission of the Italian Renaissance to the North.
The (free) full text is available online at Brill Open Access: https://brill.com/view/title/35818
This new publication is sponsored by the Foundation For Austrian Studies.