Miniature from a Speculum Historiale: Claudius Designates Nero as His Successor (1447–60): Art, History and Details

Miniature from a Speculum Historiale: Claudius Designates Nero as His Successor (1447–60) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Master of Jouvenel des Ursins (French, active 1447–60).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This miniature came from a sumptuous copy of the Speculum Historiale (Mirror of History) written by 13th-century Dominican friar Vincent de Beauvais. It covers a history of the world from creation through to De Beauvais’s own time. Here a seated Claudius, emperor of Rome (AD 41–54), is appointing a kneeling Nero, his grand-nephew and adopted stepson, to be his successor. Although an event from antiquity, contemporary dress and setting was used and would have been familiar to the reader. The original work remained much in demand and numerous copies were produced after De Beauvais’s lifetime. This miniature belonged to a deluxe copy made for René d’Anjou (1409–1480), king of Jerusalem and a major patron of art and books.

Object facts

• Title: Miniature from a Speculum Historiale: Claudius Designates Nero as His Successor
• Date: 1447–60
• Creator attribution: Master of Jouvenel des Ursins (French, active 1447–60)
• Culture: France
• Type: Manuscript
• Technique: ink, tempera, and gold on vellum
• Dimensions: Sheet: 12.9 x 9.7 cm (5 1/16 x 3 13/16 in.); Framed: 44.5 x 34.3 cm (17 1/2 x 13 1/2 in.); Matted: 40.6 x 30.5 cm (16 x 12 in.)
• Collection: MED - Manuscript Illuminations
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1987.4

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Turner, Evan H. "The Year in Review for 1987." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 75, no. 2 (1988).
• Cleveland Museum of Art, and Holger A. Klein. Sacred Gifts and Worldly Treasures: Medieval Masterworks from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2007.
• Eikelmann, Renate, Holger A. Klein, Stephen N. Fliegel, and Virginia Brilliant. The Cleveland Museum of Art: Meisterwerke von 300 bis 1550. München: Hirmer, 2007.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.