Jacopo Strada’s 16th century portrait by Titian: offprint, postcard, 2-by2 stamp block

Characteristics: Ephemera related to famous Renaissance antiquarian, numismatist and collector Jacopo Strada (or da Strada), and especially to his 1567 portrait by Titian (original in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna). This set includes:

(1) A scarce offprint: Freedman, Luba (1999), Titian’s Jacopo da Strada: a portrait of an ‘antiquario’. Renaisssance Studies, 13 (1), 17-39 – A very interesting article demonstrating the historical importance of Jacopo’s portrait, providing also a short biography of Strada and an analysis of the portrait’s symbolism in the Renaissance context.

(2) A postcard, unused, commemorating the 1935 Titian Exhibition in Venise (as pictured)

(3) A stamp block, two by two, including sections of the sheet’s margin, from Austria, 1971 (as pictured).

Jacopo da Strada (1507-1588) was an Italian polymath, who cherished being an antiquarian, studying and collecting antiquities such as works of ancient art and coins. He even received the official title of ‘Antiquarius Caesareus’ from Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II in 1566. He is now best remembered from his 1567 portrait which he commissioned from Titian, the court painter of the Habsburgs [see postcard, stamps, and offprint’s figure 1]. It was a period of enthusiasm for collecting the surviving objects of Greco-Roman culture (i.e., of classical antiquity) (Freedman, 1999:17). As a typical 16th-century antiquarian, da Strada collected coins and in 1553, published in Lyon his great work on numismatics, Epitome thesauri antiquitatum, which reproduced coins from his own enormous collection. Although he built his collection for the preservation of relics and of their attached history, he was not only a scholar but also a merchant of artworks. In particular, da Strada served as the trusted agent of the immensely rich book collector Hans Jakob Fugger (1516-1557), for whom he scouted works of art in Italy.

About us: We collect historic collectibles previously owned by famous collectors and/or institutions, and which represent milestones in the history of collecting. We consider all domains of collecting, from naturalia (minerals, meteorites, fossils, shells, etc.) to artificialia (coins, stamps, sport memorabilia, vintage toys, etc.). We consider objects with impressive pedigrees as well as rare collection catalogues and other unique documents. We have written articles on the history of collecting in various magazines and journals, including Meteorite, Colligo and Archives of Natural History. We make some of our specimens and documents available to other collectors from time to time.