A 500 year old proto-museum run by an art-advisor: the case of polymath Jacopo Strada

It is recent news that Qatar intends to reconvert an enormous flour mill on the waterfront of Doha Bay into a space for art. An international competition seeking an architect for the project has just been launched and the winner will be announced in about a year from now, probably along with clearer intentions on what exactly this space will host. This “Art Mill” is only one on a long list of recent investments in monumental art spaces – see the Whitney Museum and Prada Foundation among others -, confirming a trend likely to be related to the booming art market. But what was like to establish a new collection and to build the architecture for it 500 years ago? Has much changed since then?

 

Even though the shape of the Western museum as we know it today comes from the 18th century Enlightenment, courts and rich merchants had been active in building institutional collections of both antique and contemporary art for centuries before. Two recognised initiators of this trend were, for instance, the dukes of Bavaria William IV and his son Albert V. It is thanks to the former and the foundation of the Wittelsbach collection in the first half of the 16th century that today we have the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, arguably one of the most important museums for old masters in the world.

 

After William IV’s death in 1550, his successor Albert V used his cultural patronage for the acquisition of antiques, especially Greek and Roman statues, ancient coins and Egyptian art. Moreover, he ordered the construction of a classical studies school, the Paedagogium.

 

It is important to note that during his activity as patron for the arts, Albert V was advised by Mantuan Jacopo Strada who can be considered the quintessential renaissance version of both the modern art dealer and advisor. Strada was indeed a polymath, a typical figure in those years embodying wide erudition in many fields, technical and artistic skills in different mediums and a great degree of social connections among the rich and people of power such as Pope Paul III and his successor Marcellus II‏, three successive Habsburg Holy Roman emperors (Ferdinand I, Maximilian II and Rudolph II)‏, and the banker Jakob Fugger‏. Just like today’s advisers, Strada would extensively travel to scout and acquire artworks in different countries, following his patron’s taste and shaping it at the same time. He would often visit Venice and Rome where fallen nobilities were ready to sell their hoards to richer courts. Restless, during these travels he also closed deals for his own restoration business based in Vienna and found collectors for artists – in 1566, for instance, he convinced Titian to paint his portrait providing the painter customers to whom he could sell some stocked artworks.

 

And Jacopo Strada was also an architect. Along with Wilhelm Egkl he designed a new building in the Munich Residenz, the Antiquarium, that would host Albert V’s new acquisitions of Greek and Roman antics as well as a giant library. This Hall of Antiquities was to become the largest renaissance hall north of the Alps.

 

To say that the Antiquarium was publicly accessible in the way we intend access and audience today is not an easy and fruitful stretch. This Hall of Antiquities only resembled contemporary museums and yet it is simplistic to think that hoarding such collection and constructing a building for it outside the existing perimeter of his residence was for Albert V a simple gesture of establishing prestige or displaying power. Even though ideas of egalitarian distribution of knowledge would have to wait more than 200 years to see the light, it is thanks to renaissance polymaths and illuminated patrons that modern concepts of knowledge were created.

 

November 25, 2020