Giulio Clovio

Giulio Clovio (* 1498 in Grižane in Crikvenica, † January 5, 1578 in Rome ) was an important painter of miniatures.

The first name Giulio is a monk name he grew to 1528, before he had taken the name Giorgio. His name survives in Italian ( Giorgio Giulio Clovio ) and in Latin form ( Georgius Iulius Clovius ). He also signed, referring to its South Slavic origin, as Crovatinus, Illiricus, Macedonus etc; a South Slavic form of its name, however, is not known. In today's Croatian kroatisierte the form of the name Juraj Julije Klović is mostly common but I am having other South Slavic names reconstructed forms ( first name also Jure; surname also Klović, Glavičić, Glovičić ).

Life

He came to Italy in 1516 and worked in Venice, Florence, and over a long period in Rome under the direction of Giulio Romano. Among other things, he copied engravings of Albrecht Dürer.

In 1523 he went to Buda (now Budapest, Hungary), where he stood up to his death at the Battle of Mohács in 1526 in the service of King Ludwig II. On his return to Italy, he entered in 1528 a monastery at Mantua, but was due to an injury to maintenance in a monastery near Padua, where he met Girolamo dai Libri, from whom he learned the book illumination. In 1531 he entered the service of Cardinal Marino Grimani.

From 1539 until his death he was in the service of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese in Rome, although he painted thumbnails also on behalf of various nobles to 1561. In his last years he was a patron of the young painter El Greco. Clovio was friends with many artists such as Michelangelo and Giorgio Vasari and worked in the 1550s with Pieter Bruegel the Elder together, when he stayed in Rome.

He is buried in Chains in the Church of San Pietro. Giorgio Vasari described him in 1568 as the "Michelangelo of miniature painting ." His most important work is the Book of Hours of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese.