Exhibition Of Croatian Great Opens

Croatia’s president Ivo Josipovic was on hand last night to open an exhibition in Zagreb of the works of 16th century artist Juraj Julije Klovic, a Croatian who was considered the greatest illuminator of the Italian High Renaissance, and arguably the last very notable artist in the long tradition of the illuminated manuscript before modern revivals.

“Juraj Klovic is an example that Croatia is a country which had and will have successful people and greats,” said Josipovic

Paris’ Louvre, London’s British Museum and British Library, the British Queen’s collection at Windsor Castle and the Uffizi Gallery in Florence are just some of the places that 40 of Klovic’s works were borrowed from for the exhibition at the gallery named after him in the Croatian capital.

Klovic was born in 1498 in the Croatian town of Modrus and died in 1578 in Rome after moving to Italy at the age of 18. Klovic was known in Italy as Giorgio Giulio Clovio. Some of his major works include illuminating the Commentary of Marino Grimani on St Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. This work is now in the Sir John Soane Museum in London, and The Towneley Lectionary which is now in the New York Public Library.