The Image—Or from Whom (Not?) to Buy a Second-Hand Car

Abstract

In the summer of 2008 the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam mounted a small exhibit showing Tintoretto’s portrait of Ottavio Strada da Rosberg, antiquary to the Emperor Rudolf ii, from its own collection [Fig. 0.2], next to Titian’s famous portrait of Jacopo Strada, Ottavio’s father and predecessor as antiquary to the Emperors Ferdinand i, Maximilian ii and Rudolf ii, which had been sent on loan by the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna for the occasion [Fig. 0.1]. An occasion of some moment because it was the first time for at least three hundred and fifty years that these two portraits, which had been painted simultaneously in Venice in 1567–1568, could be seen side by side. Titian’s portrait of Jacopo Strada has always been well known, having entered the Imperial collections already by the middle of the seventeenth