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Domenico
Ghirlandaio (1449—11 January 1494) was an Italian
Renaissance painter from Florence. Among his many
apprentices was Michelangelo.
Ghirlandaio's 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 jeweller or a goldsmith,
most likely his own father. The nickname "Il
Ghirlandaio" (garland-maker) came to Domenico
from his father, a goldsmith who was famed for creating
the metallic garland-like necklaces worn by Florentine
women. In his father's shop, Domenico is said to have
made portraits of the passers-by, and he was eventually
apprenticed to Alessio Baldovinetti to study painting
and mosaic.
In 1480, Ghirlandaio painted the Saint Jerome in His
Study 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 on frescoes in
the Sala dell Orologio of the Palazzo Vecchio. He
also painted the Apotheosis of St. Zenobius, an over-life-sized
work with an elaborate architectural framework, figures
of Roman heroes, and other secular details, striking
in its perspective and structural/compositional skill.
In 1483, Ghirlandaio was summoned to Rome by Pope
Sixtus IV to paint a wall fresco in the Sistine Chapel,
Christ calling Peter and Andrew to their Apostleship.
Although he is known to have created other works in
Rome, they have been for centuries considered lost
to history. He also produced frescoes, dated before
1485, for Cappella di Santa Fina, in the Tuscan Collegiata
di San Gimignano which came under the rule of nearby
Siena at the beginning of the 1350s. His future brother-in-law,
Sebastiano Mainardi, assisted him with these commissions
in Rome and in San Gimignano.
Back in Florence in 1485, Ghirlandaio painted fresco
cycles in the Sassetti chapel of Santa Trinita for
the donor and banker Francesco Sassetti, the powerful
manager of the branch of the Medici bank in Genoa,
a position subsequently filled by Giovanni Tornabuoni—Ghirlandaio's
future patron. In the chapel, Ghirlandaio painted
six scenes from the life of Saint Francis, including
Saint 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, a child of the Spini family, who died as a
result of a fall from a window. The first work depicts
a portrait of Lorenzo de Medici, and the third, the
painter's own likeness, which he also included in
one of his pictures in the Santa Maria Novella as
well as in the Adoration of the Magi in the Ospedale
degli Innocenti orphanage. The altarpiece from the
Sassetti chapel, the Adoration of the Shepherds, is
now in the Florentine Academy.
Immediately after this commission, Ghirlandaio was
asked to renew the frescoes in the choir of Santa
Maria Novella, which formed the chapel of the Ricci
family, but the Tornabuoni and Tornaquinci families,
which were much more prominent than the Ricci, undertook
the cost of the restoration, with conditions—the
question of preserving the arms of the Ricci gave
rise to what some historians described as amusing
litigation. The Tornabuoni Chapel frescoes, by Ghirlandaio
and many assistants, were painted in four courses
along the three walls, the main subjects being the
lives of the Madonna and St. John the Baptist. These
works are particularly interesting in that they include
many historical portraits, a genre in which Ghirlandaio
was preeminently skilled.Ghirlandaio's Tornabuoni
Chapel series on the life of Mary, executed with utmost
attention to realistic detail, appears to represent
domestic scenes from contemporary life of Florentine
nobility, rather than a cosmic event
In this cycle, there are no fewer than twenty-one
portraits of the Tornabuoni and Tornaquinci families–in
the Angel appearing to Zacharias, portraits of Politian,
Marsilio Ficino and others; in the Salutation of Anna
and Elizabeth, the beautiful Giovanna Tornabuoni (identified
(incorrectly) by Giorgio Vasari as Ginevra de Benci);
in the Expulsion of Joachim from the Temple, (Sebastiano)
Mainardi and Baldovinetti (some art historians have
surmised that the latter figure may be the likeness
of Ghirlandaio's father). The Ricci chapel was completed
in 1490; the altarpiece was probably executed with
the assistance of Domenico's brothers, Davide and
Benedetto; the painted window was from Domenico's
own design.
Other distinguished works from Ghirlandaio's hand
are an altarpiece in tempera of the Virgin Adored
by Saints Zenobius, Justus and Others, painted for
the church of Saint Justus, and considered a remarkable
masterpiece—in modern times it has been in the
Uffizi gallery. Christ in Glory with Romuald and Other
Saints, in the Badia of Volterra; what may be considered
his finest panel-picture, the Adoration of the Magi
(1488), in the previously-mentioned Church of the
Innocenti, and the Visitation (Louvre) which bears
the last ascertained date (1491) of all his works.
Ghirlandaio did not often attempt the nude—one
of his pictures including nudes, Vulcan and His Assistants
Forging Thunderbolts, was painted for Lorenzo II de'
Medici, but, as in the case of several others specified
by Vasari, no longer exists. The mosaics that he produced
date before 1491—one, of special note, is the
Annunciation, on a portal of the cathedral of Florence.
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