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An Old Man with a Strawberry Nose (1480). Tempera on wood, 62 x 46 cm Louvre, Paris

Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449 - January 11, 1494) was a Florentine Renaissance painter, a contemporary of Botticelli and Filippino Lippi. His many apprentices included Michelangelo.

His full name is given as Domenico di Tommaso Curradi di Doffo Bigordi; it appears therefore that his father's surname was Curradi, and his grandfather's Bigordi. Domenico, the eldest of eight children, was at first apprenticed to a jeweler or a goldsmith, most likely his own father. "Il Ghirlandajo" (garland-maker) nickname, came to Domenico from his father, a goldsmith was renowned in creating the metallic garlands worn by Florentine women. In his father's shop, Domenico was continually making portraits of the passers-by, and he was apprenticed to Alessio Baldovinetti to study painting and mosaic.

[edit] First works in Florence and Rome

In 1480 Ghirlandaio painted Saint Jerome and other frescoes in the Church of Ognissanti, Florence, and a life-sized Last Supper in its refectory. From 1481 to 1485 he was employed upon frescoes in the Sala dell' Orologio of the Palazzo Vecchio. There he painted the Apotheosis of St. Zenobius, a greater than life-size work, with much architectural framework, figures of Roman heroes and other detail, both striking in its perspective and structural propriety.

He was summoned in 1483 to Rome by Pope Sixtus IV to paint a Sistine Chapel wall fresco: Christ calling Peter and Andrew to their Apostleship. Other works in Rome are now perished. Before 1485 he had likewise produced his frescoes in the chapel of Santa Fina, in the Tuscan town of S. Gimignano, which after c.1350 was under the rule of nearby Siena. His future brother-in-law, Sebastiano Mainardi, assisted him in these productions in both Rome and San Gimignano.

[edit] Later Works in Tuscany

Back in Florence in 1485, Ghirlandaio painted fresco cycles in the Sassetti Chapel of Santa Trinita for the donor and banker Francesco Sassetti, head of the Medici bank in Genoa. He was later replaced by Giovanni Tornabuoni, a future patron of Ghirlandaio. In the chapel, Domenico painted six scenes from the life of St Francis, including St Francis obtaining from Pope Honorius the approval of the Rules of his Order; Death and Obsequies, and Resuscitation by the interposition of the beatified saint, of a child of the Spini family, who had been killed by falling out of a window. In the first work is a portrait of Lorenzo de Medici; and in the third the painter's own likeness, which he introduced also into one of the pictures in S. Maria Novella, and in the Adoration of the Magi in the hospital of the Innocenti. The altarpiece of the Sassetti chapel,Adoration of the Shepherds, is now in the Florentine Academy. Immediately after this commission, Ghirlandajo was asked to renew the frescoes in the choir of S. Maria Novella, which formed the chapel of the Ricci family, but the Tornabuoni and Tornaquinci families, then much more opulent than the Ricci, undertook the cost of the restoration, under conditions, as to preserving the arms of the Ricci, which gave rise in the end to some amusing incidents of litigation. The frescoes, by Domenico and many assistants, are in four courses along the three walls, the leading subjects being the lives of the Madonna and of the Baptist. These works are particularly interesting in containing many historical portraits, a method of treatment in which Ghirlandajo was preeminently skilled.

Ghirlandajo's series on the life of Mary, executed with utmost attention to realistic detail, seem to represent domestic scenes from contemporary life of the Florentine nobility, rather than historical events of cosmic significance.

There are no less than twenty-one portraits of the Tornabuoni and Tornaquinci families; in the subject of the Angel appearing to Zacharias, those of Politian, Marsilio Ficino and others; in the Salutation of Anna and Elizabeth, the beautiful Ginevra de Benci; in the Expulsion of Joachim from the Temple, Mainardi and Baldovinetti (or the latter figure may perhaps be Ghirlandajo's father). The Ricci chapel was reopened and completed in 1490; the altarpiece was probably executed with the assistance of Domenico's brothers, David and Benedetto; the painted window was from Domenico's own design. Other distinguished works from his hand are an altarpiece in tempera of the Virgin Adored by Sts Zenobius, Justus and others, painted for the church of St Justus, but now in the Uffizi gallery, a remarkable masterpiece; Christ in Glory with Romuald and other Saints, in the Badia of Volterra; the Adoration of the Magi, in the church of the Innocenti (already mentioned), perhaps his finest panel-picture (1488); and the Visitation (Louvre) which bears the latest ascertained date (1491) of all his works. Ghirlandajo did not often attempt the nude; one of his pictures of this character, Vulcan and his Assistants forging Thunderbolts, was painted for Lo Spedaletto, but (like several others specified by Vasari), no longer exists. The mosaics which he produced date before 1491; one, of especial celebrity, is the Annunciation, on a portal of the cathedral of Florence.

[edit] Critical Assessment and Legacy

His scheme of composition is grand and decorous; his chiaroscuro excellent, and especially his perspectives, which he would design on a very elaborate scale by the eye alone; his color is more open to criticism, but this remark applies much less to the frescoes than the tempera-pictures, which are sometimes too broadly and crudely bright. He worked in these two methods alone---never in oils; and his frescoes are what the Italians term buon fresco, without any finishing in tempera.

"Apotheosis of St. Zenobius" in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence

A certain hardness of outline, not unlike the character of bronze sculpture, may attest his early training in metal work. He first introduced into Florentine art that mixture of the sacred and the profane which had already been practiced in Siena. Vasari says that Ghirlandajo was the first to abandon in great part the use of gilding in his pictures, representing by genuine painting any objects supposed to be gilded; yet this does not hold good without some considerable exceptions the highlights of the landscape, for instance, in the Adoration of the Shepherds, now in the Florence Academy, being put in gold. Many drawings and sketches by this painter, now in the Uffizi gallery, are remarkable for vigour of outline. One of the great glories of Ghirlandajo is that he gave some early art education to Michelangelo, who cannot, however, have remained with him long.

This renowned artist died of pestilential fever on the 11th of January 1494, and was buried in S. Maria Novella. He had been twice married, and left six children, three of them being sons. He had a long and honorable line of descendants, which came to a close in the 17th century, when the last members of the family entered monasteries. It is probable that Domenico died poor; he appears to have been gentle, honorable and conscientious, as well as energetically diligent.

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Domenico Ghirlandaio

[edit] References