Giulio Clovio

• 1. Introduction

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  Giulio Clovio appears in a portrait alongside Michelangelo, Titian, and Raphael. The artist who painted this group, El Greco, counted all three among his masters, and placed Clovio right beside them. Clovio never touched a ceiling fresco or a public altarpiece the way those three did. His life's work fit inside books small enough to hold in two hands, illustrated with a brush of only a few hairs. Some historians consider him the greatest illuminator of the Italian High Renaissance. Yet he built almost his entire career far from where he was born, working for cardinals and popes across Renaissance Italy. How did a manuscript painter earn a place beside giants of fresco and oil? And why, centuries later, do two different countries still claim him as their own?

• 2. Grimani Households and Royal Courts

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  Juraj Julije Klović was born in Grižane, a village in the Kingdom of Croatia, in 1498, into a Croatian family later remembered as Clovio Croata. Nobody recorded where he received his earliest training, though he may have studied with monks near Rijeka of Novi Bazar as a boy. At eighteen, he left for Italy and entered the household of Cardinal Marino Grimani, who trained him as a painter. Sometime between 1516 and about 1523, he lived with Marino in Rome, in the residence of Marino's uncle, Cardinal Domenico Grimani. During this period, he studied under Giulio Romano and also under Girolamo dai Libri. As a protégé of Domenico Grimani, he engraved medals and seals for his patron and illuminated an important manuscript for the family.

  By 1524, Clovio was working at Buda, in the Hungarian court of King Louis II, where he painted the Judgment of Paris and Lucretia. After Louis died in the Battle of Mohács, Clovio left for Rome and continued building his career there. Following 1527, he visited several monasteries belonging to the Canons Regular of St. Augustine. In 1534, he returned to the household of Cardinal Marino Grimani. A year later, he may have followed Marino to Perugia, where the cardinal served as papal legate. There, Clovio is thought to have illustrated a manuscript Marino had written around that time. By the end of 1538, Clovio was likely back in Rome, where he met the writer Francisco de Hollanda.

  Later, Clovio joined the household of Alessandro Farnese, remaining there for the rest of his life. Between 1551 and 1553, he worked in Florence, where he painted a miniature portrait of Eleanor of Toledo. That work is now held in a private collection at Welbeck Abbey in England.

• 3. The Farnese Hours

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  Nine years of work went into a single prayer book for Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, finished in 1546 and today called the Farnese Hours. The manuscript now lives in the Morgan Library in New York City. El Greco captured this achievement in a second portrait of Clovio, showing him pointing directly at the book. Twenty-eight miniatures fill its pages, depicting scenes such as the Adoration of the Magi and Solomon Adored by the Queen of Sheba. These scenes are drawn from both the Old and New Testaments.

  A separate double-page image portrays the Corpus Christi procession moving through Rome, one of the manuscript's most celebrated scenes. Vasari claimed that the book's silver-gilt covers were the work of Benvenuto Cellini, a claim modern scholars do not accept.

• 4. Friends Among Masters

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  El Greco arrived in Rome from Heraklion, a city on Crete, still early in his career when he grew close to Clovio. Decades younger than Clovio, El Greco later worked in Spain. Clovio was also known by another name among his contemporaries: the Michelangelo of the miniature. Books carrying his miniatures became famous largely because of the skill of his illustrations. He was especially persuasive in translating the style of Italian High Renaissance painting into the smaller scale of manuscript work.

  Pieter Bruegel the Elder was a personal friend of Clovio, and stayed with him in Rome during a trip to Italy in 1553. Bruegel added a small medallion of ships caught in a storm onto one of Clovio's miniatures of the Last Judgment. That piece is now held at the New York Public Library. Clovio's own will listed six paintings by Bruegel, and every one of them has since disappeared.

• 5. Manuscripts in Dispute

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  Sir John Soane's Museum in London holds Clovio's Commentary of Marino Grimani on Saint Paul's Epistle to the Romans, called today the Soane Manuscript. The book consists of 130 vellum pages, including two large miniatures set within richly decorated borders. Both miniatures depict the conversion of Saint Paul.

  The Towneley Lectionary, now kept at the New York Public Library, probably once belonged to Cardinal Alessandro Farnese. Used during church services, it contains six majestic full-page miniatures set opposite smaller depictions of the Evangelists. Its illustrations introduced the scripture readings assigned to each service, including scenes of the Nativity, the Resurrection, and the Last Judgment.

  The Colonna Missal, held today in the John Rylands Library in Manchester, was originally made for Cardinal Pompeo Colonna. Scholars debated its authorship for years. Some once attributed it to Raphael, around 1517, and others suggested the artist Vinzenzio Raimondi. It is now generally attributed to Clovio himself.

• 6. Beyond the Book

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  Twelve full-page miniatures depicting the victories of Emperor Charles V are held today in the British Library. The same collection includes the Stuart de Rothesay Book of Hours, originally commissioned by Cardinal Marino Grimani, which contains four miniatures by Clovio. The Vatican Library holds a manuscript biography of Federigo III di Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, illustrated by Clovio. Further examples of his work sit in libraries in Vienna, New York City, Munich, and Paris, along with numerous private collections.

  In 2012, a large exhibition of Clovio's work was staged at Klovićevi Dvori, the Palace of Klović, an art gallery dedicated to him in Zagreb. According to a description published by Antonfrancesco Cirni, Clovio designed costumes for the elaborate wedding festivities of Ortensia Borromeo in March 1565. Held in the Vatican, the celebrations included a tournament staged in the Belvedere courtyard. Such design work was a duty often expected of a Renaissance court painter. A series of anonymous etchings recorded the costumes, some likely based on drawings Clovio himself made.

• 7. Death and Anniversary

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  Giulio Clovio died in Rome on the 5th of January 1578. He was buried in the Basilica of San Pietro in Vincoli, the church that also holds Michelangelo's celebrated statue of Moses.

  In 1998, Croatia marked the 500th anniversary of Clovio's birth. The Croatian National Bank issued a special 200 kuna silver coin to commemorate the occasion, and a monument to Clovio was raised in Drivenik. The Croatian government also drew attention by purchasing Clovio's painting The Last Judgement, once his gift to Pope Clement VII. Bernardin Modrić released a film titled The Gospel According to Klović in 2006, and the Vatican marked the anniversary with its own postal stamps.

• 8. Croatian in Italy

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  Today, both Italy and Croatia celebrate Giulio Clovio's memory. He was born in the Kingdom of Croatia and openly stated his Croatian identity throughout his life. Yet he spent nearly his entire career working in Italy, producing manuscripts for Italian cardinals and popes. That record is why he is often labeled an Italian painter instead of a Croatian one. Historians still describe him as arguably the last major figure in the long European tradition of the illuminated manuscript. That tradition would not return in force until occasional revivals many generations later.