Giulio Clovio Grisone, Croatia 1498 - 1578 Rome

This remarkable gouache, previously unknown, can be linked in terms of composition with another depiction by Clovio of the Last Judgement (fig. 1), which is found, within a typical decorative border, on one of the pages of the Towneley Lectionary, now in the New York Public Library (see Maria Giononi-Visani, Giorgio Giulio Clovio, New York 1980, p. 70, reproduced p. 73). 

The two images differ mainly in the upper part of the composition: in the Towneley version, Christ in glory is surrounded by numerous angels and below, almost in a semicircle, is a large group of standing Saints and Prophets, making a more crowded composition than in the present version, where Christ in glory is flanked by the kneeling Madonna and St. John the Baptist, with four Angels below playing the trumpets of the Last Judgement, and heads of Saints and Beati in the background. The landscapes in the centre of the two works are also very different, but the lower sections in both are largely similar.

The date of the Towneley Lectionary is still disputed, but de Tolnay's suggestion of between 1550 and 1560 seems plausible, especially in view of his very interesting attribution to Pieter Bruegel of a tiny seascape with a stormy harbour, which appears in the lower centre of the border of the New York Last Judgement (see Charles de Tolnay, 'Newly discovered Miniatures by Pieter Bruegel the Elder', The Burlington Magazine, vol. CVII, no. 744, March 1965, pp. 110-114).  According to de Tolnay the seascape was in all likelihood done in 1553, when Bruegel was in Rome. The collaboration of the two artists is established by the inventory attached to the last will of Giulio Clovio (dated 31 December 1578), which lists a miniature done by both artists in collaboration;  De Tolnay believes it is most likely that the figures are by Clovio and the landscape by Bruegel.  Giorgio Giulio Clovio, known as Giulio Clovio, was praised during his lifetime as il più raro e il più eccellente miniatore.

The claim, inscribed on the 19th-century frame, that this miniature was presented by Clovio to Pope Clement VII upon his accession to the Papal throne in 1523, cannot, of course, be substantiated, but if it were to be true, then that would mean this version of The Last Judgement is an early work, predating by a quarter century or more the version of the same scene painted by Clovio for the Towneley Lectionary.