CLOVIO, Giulio

The two sheets of a book, Elymas Struck Blind by St Paul before the Proconsul Sergius Paulus and The Three Theological Virtues were destined to illustrate a manuscript of Cardinal Grimani Commentaries to St Paul’s Epistles to the Romans, in their 1542 version, a text which ultimately would only appear in print.

In the Elymas page Giulio Clovio copied freely from one of Raphael’s tapestry cartoons depicting the Acts of the Apostles.

In this chalk drawing Minerva is seen in profile, looking toward the left. She is wearing an imaginative helmet depicting a battle scene. This head unmistakably follows Michelangelo’s ideal portraits, it reveals closest parallels to Michelangelo’s presentation drawings for Tommaso de’ Cavalieri, such as that of Cleopatra.

Giulio Clovio was the last of the great miniaturists, bringing the fulsome forms of the Late renaissance into manuscript illustration - a medium rendered rarefied by the currency of printed books. Clovio, a daring colourist, was a friend of Michelangelo and the teacher of El Greco. These various currents are visible in this virtuoso example of sixteenth-century expressionism.

This Crucifixion is a study for a composition which is known from a contemporary engraving of the final version made by Cornelis Cort. Clovio liked to use black chalk in his drawings, working out his figures in meticulous detail, we can feel the miniaturist everywhere. Small, spherical heads are characteristic of the artist.

Cardinal Alessandro Farnese (1520-1589), grandson of Pope Paul III, commissioned Giulio Clovio to paint a book of hours now known as the Farnese Hours. This book constitutes the most famous manuscript of the late Italian Renaissance. Its sequence of images, however, is derived from medieval models. All illustrations (26 full-page miniatures and 37 ornamental text pages) are from the hand of Giulio Clovio, praised by Vasari as the most important illuminator of all times. He is said to have worked on these pictures for nine years.

Biblical narratives are paired with apocryphal stories; all are framed with elaborate architectural borders decorated with sensuous nudes, masks, and floral swags, hardly a manifestation of the biblical accuracy and decorum demanded by the Protestant or Catholic Reformation, but certainly something Clovio would have remembered from his training with Giulio Romano before the latter left for Mantua in 1524.

The double page here shows the Annunciation to the Shepherds, and Augustus and the Sibyl.

The double page (folios 27v and 28r) shows the Adoration of the Shepherds and the Fall of Man in an elaborate formal richness, using the frequently mannered and exaggerated stylistic vocabulary of the late Renaissance. The architectonic frame is packed with muscular nudes, putti and atlases. The small pictures treated like cameos show on the left-hand page the Annunciation to the Shepherds (above) and the Presentation of Christ in the Temple (below); on the right-hand page the Creation of Eve (above) and the Expulsion from Paradise (below).

The double page (folios 72v and 73r) depicts a Corpus Christi procession making its way to the Old St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome. High clergy, ministrants and members of the Swiss Guard accompany the Pope, who is carried in his sedan chair and holding a monstrance. Towards the top of the picture the clouds open up to reveal a vision of the saints.

Sebastiano del Piombo came to Rome in 1511 and soon became friends with Michelangelo, who took him under his wing. Michelangelo made several drawings in preparation for the altar painting of The Flagellation of Christ, painted by Sebastiano in San Pietro in Montorio, Rome. His final draft, to be used as a model for the painting, is lost today, but it is documented by the copy made by Giulio Clovio.

Over the course of his long career Giulio Clovio returned repeatedly to the Pietà as a subject.The inventory drawn up shortly before his death list seven works on this subject, including two it says were based on inventions by Michelangelo. The influence of the Florentine master is also evident in the present drawing, in which the central group was apparently inspired by the Pietà in Saint Peter’s Cathedral. The drawing served as a model for a miniature and for a painting by the Genoese miniaturist and goldsmith Giovanni Battista Castello.

Earlier art-historical scholarship had frequently regarded the present drawing, depicting the scene of The Rape of Ganymede in horizontal format as the sheet presented by Michelangelo as a gift to Tommaso de’ Cavalieri. At present this sheet is attributed to Giulio Clovio, who made after the original drawing by Michelangelo.

This drawing is one of the many copies made after Michelangelo’s original design.

The two sheets of a book, Elymas Struck Blind by St Paul before the Proconsul Sergius Paulus and The Three Theological Virtues were destined to illustrate a manuscript of Cardinal Grimani Commentaries to St Paul’s Epistles to the Romans, in their 1542 version, a text which ultimately would only appear in print.