Jacopo Strada
Jacopo Strada (* 1507 in Mantua, † 1588 in Prague ) was an Italian scholar, painter, architect, goldsmith, numismatist, writer and art collector. In addition, he was an inventor of waterworks and other machines - all this and this obviously an accomplished courtier.
Life and work
He was married to Ottilia Schenk from Posberg in Franconia since 1544. He lived since 1546 in Nuremberg in 1549 and received the rights of citizenship. He was in the service of the Augsburg patrician humanist and great books collector Johann Jakob Fugger and graduated as an agent art purchases in Italy.
Fugger has given around the middle of the 16th century a comprehensive, systematic, hierarchical, geographical, political and chronologically structured collection of coats of arms of Italian and connected with the history of Italy noble houses in order. Jacopo Strada, bookseller in Mantua, has this coat of arms collected. Carefully and beautifully painted with gold, silver and bright opaque colors, fill fifteen beautifully bound folio volumes, a compendium of territorial and personal ties in Italy in the Middle Ages and the early modern period.
From 1556 he was in Vienna as Hofantiquarius, an art expert and manager of the imperial treasury, as well as architect for Emperor Ferdinand I and worked on expanding the Imperial Palace. During these years he acquired a house in the center of Vienna ( today Bankgasse 10), which he owned until his death. In 1566 he traveled to the Bavarian Duke Albrecht V and helped him build his sculpture collection, which is today situated in the Antiquarium in the Munich Residenz. For this collection established in 1568 building, he provided important ideas and plans.
His portrait, 1567/1568 painted by Titian, shows the art collector. It came into the possession of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria and is now part of the art collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. It is narrated that it also the Venetian artist Marietta Robusti, daughter of Tintoretto portrayed.
1564 worked as Hofconterfeier under Maximilian II, he received from the emperor clothes money so he muge received during hof more bas. In 1568 he delivered in Vienna, Simmering the design for the castle Neugebäude. He was guided by northern Italian villas and French king and garden palaces.
1571-1574 he wrote in Vienna a directory of ancient writings and a lexicon for eleven languages. For Castle Bučovice ( Butschowitz ) near Brno, he presented the client January Sember of Boskovic designs.
Died in 1574 after thirty years of marriage, his wife Ottilia, in the same year, on December 27, 1574, he was elevated to the peerage. In 1575 he left his house, demolish and construct a new building, in which he " künstencammer " housed his 3,000 -volume library, and the respectable. He owned the building in which he occasionally resident guest of the imperial court until his death. The " Palais Strada " was one of the most remarkable monuments of the Vienna late Renaissance. 1875, the construction of the Burgtheater in Vienna, it had to be demolished.
Emperor Rudolph II brought both Strada, father and son Octavio, immediately after his accession to the Prague court and entrusted him with various tasks, not least because he had Octavio's daughter Catherine made her his favorite. The Emperor could not marry Catherine, though she had borne him six children. Strada published several works which satisfied the imperial desire for dignity and worship of ancestors. The Epitome thesauri Antiquitatum, a history of Emperor Julius Caesar to Maximilian II, based on their representation on coins.
Jacopo della Strada died in Prague, and was buried at St. Nicholas Church in the Lesser Town.
Son of Octavio (1550-1607) succeeded his father in the imperial favor. He, too, was well educated and worked as a historian. He wrote a Keyser Chronick.