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Giorgio Giulio Clovio

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

1572
Tempera and gold paint on vellum, in paper montage with pen and brown ink and touches of watercolor
36.7 × 25 cm (14.4 × 9.8 in)

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In the collection of Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago · as of July 2026

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FROM THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO’S CATALOG

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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