Travel: Rome, Landshut, Nuremberg—Strada’s Connection with Wenzel Jamnitzer

rhymed Paulus Melissus in the second (1586) edition of his Schediasmata poetica.1 Strada’s first steps on the soil of Rome, seat of the venerable Republic and triumphant Empire that he had been taught to revere even in his earliest years, must have filled him with the same emotions that have been registered in the memoirs of so many students and tourists both before and after him. Melissus implies that Strada had spent many years in Rome, information that he probably obtained from Strada himself. Though it is possible that it refers chiefly to Strada’s later sojourn, between 1553 and 1554, there are sufficient indications that he had spent some considerable time there even before he definitely settled in Germany in the early 1540s. Unfortunately, the lack of data concerning Strada’s early life does not allow a reconstruction of the sequence of his artistic training, his hypothetical visits to the universities of Bologna and/or Pavia, and his more extensive travels in Italy. Considering the usual curriculum of the journeyman or student, who would normally set out on his travels only after having acquired his basic training, I think we can assume that Strada likewise only thought of widening his horizon when he had already acquired some basic proficiency both in his art and in his erudite studies. That would have him set out from Mantua at the latest towards the middle of the 1530s, when he was about twenty years old. These travels appear to have covered a large part of his native country, if we may believe Strada’s claims in the preface of his Epitome thesauri antiquitatum, the illustrated numismatic treatise that he published in Lyon in 1553. To find the greatest quantity possible of ancient coins to include in his book, Strada