Jacopo Strada

Jacopo Strada (Mantua, 1507 – Prague 1588) was an Italian polymath courtier, painter, architect, goldsmith, inventor of machines, numismatist, linguist, collector, and merchant of works of art.

In 1556 he moved to Vienna, taking a house that still stands, now Bankgasse 12, and putting his antiquarian knowledge at the disposal of the Habsburg court, and rewarded with the care of the imperial treasury.

In December 1566 he journeyed to Albrecht's court in Munich, to oversee the Antiquarium planned in conjunction and competition with Fugger, returning to Vienna in 1568.

For Schloss Neugebäude, begun from scratch (neu gebäude) as a hunting box by Maximilian II in 1568, no architect is reported in surviving documents, but its advanced integration with gardens makes Strada the most likely candidate; its construction, altered by numerous minute changes, abruptly came to an end with the Emperor's death in 1576.

However, in his "expensive den",[8] Strada makes a very different offer to a client: "He manhandles a Venus, whose pudica gesture is wittily cancelled out by his hand clamped on her breast.

His Palais Strada stood as an eminent example of Late Renaissance architecture in the Simmering district of Vienna until it was demolished in 1875 in the rebuilding of the Wiener Burgtheater.

In 1577 he published in Frankfurt-am-Main Sebastiano Serlio's seventh book of architecture,[12] with its original Italian text, which exists in manuscript on parchment, and Strada's Latin translation.

His son, Ottavio Strada (1550–1607),[notes 1] his assistant at the Hofburg, followed in his father's footsteps in the service of the Imperial court as expert in works of art.