Art Institute of Chicago

The Four Evangelists, within a Border of Flowers, Birds, and Insects

Circle of Giulio Clovio

Date

1572

Medium

Tempera and gold paint on vellum, in paper montage with pen and brown ink and touches of watercolor

Culture

Italy

Department

Prints and Drawings

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

His contemporaries boasted that the illuminator Giorgio Giulio Clovio could paint the entire ' Sistine Ceiling on a single page. This Michelangelesque miniature is actually a collage, and the coat of arms of Pope Gregory XIII suggests that it belonged to a manuscript housed in the Sistine Chapel. When Napoleon's troops raided Rome in the late 18th century, sixty manuscripts were stolen from the pontifical chapel; many of these are known to have been cut up and reassembled.

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