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Bird of paradise motive by Julije Klovic in the Farnese Hours

The pocket-sized prayerbook The Farnese Hours, the work of the Croatian miniaturist Juraj Julije Klovic, was illustrated in Rome between 1539 and 1545. The paper explores the motive and the symbolic meaning of the illustration of the bird of paradise miniature on folio 6v of this masterpiece. In the XVI century the bird of paradise legless skins were brought to Europe from Indonesian archipelago what led Europeans to believe that this bird is actually mythological bird Phoenix, the symbol of the Immaculate Maternity of Virgin Mary in the Renaissance visual arts. As the Latin text on folio 6v is a Hymn dedicated to Virgin Mary, authors conclude that the drawing of the bird of paradise at the bottom border of the page is her iconographic symbol. Klovic’ s contemporary, Giulio Romano, applied the same motive, but with different symbolical meaning, on the tapestry The Barque of Venus in 1540. This fact points not only to the artistic exchange of the fellow artists, but also enlightens the genesis of a new iconographic motive, as a consequence of great geographic discoveries of the time.

Juraj Julije Klovic; Giulio Clovio; Farnese Hours; bird of paradise; Renaissance iconography; Giulio Romano; phoenix

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