Domenico Ghirlandaio

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 jeweller 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 damsels. 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.

First works in Florence and Rome

In 1480 Ghirlandajo 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; he painted the Apotheosis of St. Zenobius, a work beyond the size of life, with much architectural framework, figures of Roman heroes and other detail, striking in 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 S. 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 Rome and in S. Gimignano.

Later Works in Tuscany

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.

Critical Assessment and Legacy

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.

References

1449 births | 1494 deaths | Natives of Tuscany | Tuscan painters | Renaissance painters

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First works in Florence and Rome

Later Works in Tuscany

Critical Assessment and Legacy

References