The Four Evangelists, within a Border of Flowers, Birds, and Insects
1572
Circle of Giulio Clovio Croatian, active Italy, 1498–1578
Italy
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.
Tempera and gold paint on vellum, in paper montage with pen and brown ink and touches of watercolor