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What was Julije Klović's model for the bird of paradise image in Hours Farnese?

The pocket-sized (110 x 173 millimetres) prayerbook Hours Horae Beatae Mariae Virginis, better known as Farnese Hours, is the iconographically richest and most interesting piece in the work of the Croatian miniaturist Juraj Julije Klović (1498– 1578). The book, currently kept in the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, was illustrated in Rome between 1539 and 1545, at the order of Klović's then-patron Alessandro Farnese (1520– 1589). The origin of Klović's motifs is a fascinating topic that has been the theme of several studies, but the background of models for his drawings deserves equal scholarly attention. This essay explores the origin of the models for the bird of paradise miniature in Farnese Hours. Birds of paradise do not inhabit European regions, including those in which Klović resided, and at the time of the illustration there were no zoos in the modern sense where the artist could have observed the animal. We are furthermore certain that the miniaturist did not participate in European expeditions to the Far East. In this study, we use historical data about the first birds of paradise in Europe as well as about their representations available in Europe. We start from the assumption that these animals and images were the only possible sources of models for this exotic and symbolic miniature. In Farnese Hours, Europeans birds were drawn whole and in positions characteristic for their postures and behaviours. Yet the drawing of the bird on the folio 6v fails to follow these rules. This is a drawing of a bird of paradise, determined as Paradisea Augustae – Victoriae and known today as Count Raggi's or Raggiana bird of paradise (Paradisaea raggiana P. L. Sclater, 1873). The bird is shown from above and from the back so its breast, belly and legs cannot be seen. While all other birds in the prayerbook are shown in movement, this bird looks lifeless. This indicates that Klović used the unmounted skin of a bird of paradise for its drawing. This hypothesis is further supported by the fact that in the sixteenth century birds of paradise were brought to Europe not alive but as legless unmounted birds. Legs, internal organs, and often wings were removed by indigenous peoples who prepared the birds. This is why the miniature shows the bird of paradise from the back. Such legless sheds probably lead Europeans to believe that birds of paradise need no legs, as in paradise they never touch the ground, but float on the wind and eat nothing but morning dew. Yellow flank plume and brown upper back indicates that the bird in The Farnese Hours is in fact Greater Bird of Paradise, Paradisea paoda (Linnaeus, 1758), a common lowland and hill forest bird, endemic to southwfestern Papua New Guinea and the Aru islands. The first Renaissance naturalists, like Paul Belon, used the mysterious anatomy and habits of a bird o paradise as a direct proof for the actual existence of a legendary Phoenix, an ancient symbol of rebirth and feternity, was in the Renaissance visual arts sometimes used as a symbolic of the Immaculate Maternity of Virgin Mary. The Latin text on the folio 6v with the bird of paradise drawing is a Hymn dedicated to Virgin Mary, so Klović actually draw her iconographic symbol. To our knowledge, there are six representations of various birds of paradise in the European visual arts of the sixteenth century, executed in different techniques: pencil drawing, either in colour or black and white ; gouache ; wood cut ; and tapestry. We may conclude that the bird of paradise miniature by Klović in The Farnese Hours is the first colour drawing of a Greater Bird of Paradisse in Europe.

Klović; Hours Farnese; bird of paradise; trade skin; model for drawings

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