GHIRLANDAIO FAMILY. - A family of Florentine painters. The most prominent member was Domenico, born in Florence in 1449 and died there on 11 January 1494; his father, Tommaso Bigordi, a goldsmith, received the surname Ghirlandaio, according to Vasari, because he made garlands of rare and precious craftsmanship “to adorn the heads of Florentine maidens.”
According to tradition, Alessio Baldovinetti was Domenico’s master; however, an examination of his early works reveals the decisive influence on his artistic formation of Domenico Veneziano and Verrocchio (frescoes in the Vespucci chapel in Ognissanti, in the church of Cercina, and in Sant’Andrea di Brozzi), along with echoes of Lippi, Benozzo Gozzoli, Castagno, and other major Tuscan masters active around the mid-15th century. The frescoes depicting *The Vision and the Funeral of St Fina* in the Collegiate Church of San Gimignano (1475) already demonstrate Domenico’s luminous style, which enlivens sacred scenes with vivid figures set, through the opening of the background (cf. *Funeral of St Fina*), in the environment of a typical medieval town. This narrative interest in the contemporary settings and customs also characterizes Domenico’s major fresco cycles: in the Sassetti Chapel in Santa Trinita (consecrated in 1485: *Stories of St Francis*) and in the choir of Santa Maria Novella (*Stories of the Virgin and St John the Baptist*, completed in 1490), where he depicts the Florentine piazza with the church (*St Francis Raises a Child of the Spini Family*), or a sumptuous Renaissance interior (*Birth of the Virgin*), while also delighting in elegant ornamental schemes and the rich effect of brocade. This earned him the reputation as a faithful interpreter of the most felicitous and splendid era of Medici Florence.
GHIRLANDAIO FAMILY – *Birth of the Virgin*, by Domenico Ghirlandaio. Florence, Church of Santa Maria Novella.
His love for detail made him receptive to Flemish painting, introduced to Florence by Hugo van der Goes with the Portinari Triptych (cf. *St Jerome* in the church of Ognissanti, 1480; and two panels—executed with assistants—depicting the *Adoration of the Magi*, one on the altar of the Sassetti Chapel, 1485, and the other in the Innocenti Foundling Hospital, 1488). His interest in the world around him also led him to portraiture. Lively portraits include those of contemporary figures introduced—not merely as background figures—but as protagonists in sacred narratives, and the kneeling patrons in the Sassetti Chapel may be considered masterpieces in this genre. Yet these images do not detract from the equilibrium and broad compositional vision that always characterize Domenico’s work when he relied less on assistants (*Vocation of Peter and Andrew* in the Sistine Chapel, 1482; *Funeral of St Francis* in the Sassetti Chapel; *Coronation of the Virgin* in the choir of Santa Maria Novella). It is to these qualities that Domenico owes his importance in relation to the developments of the Cinquecento achieved by Fra Bartolomeo and even Raphael.
A work of serene harmony is the *Last Supper* in the refectory of Ognissanti (1480), inspired by Castagno’s version but distinguished by a quiet luminosity of color; fused in the clear light that enters from the background, which opens onto a flower garden, much like the altarpiece with the *Virgin in Majesty with SS Zanobi and Justus* (now in the Uffizi), one of the painter’s finest expressions. His vast output was not always of uniform quality, a fact also due to the extensive participation of assistants who worked under his guidance and from his cartoons in fresco cycles and panel paintings. Among these assistants were Bartolomeo di Giovanni, Francesco Granacci, Jacopo del Tedesco, Domenico’s brother-in-law Bastiano Mainardi, and particularly the brothers David and Benedetto.
With DAVID (b. in Florence on 14 March 1452, d. there on 10 April 1525), Domenico undertook the decoration of the Sistine Library in Rome (1475), a commission largely executed by his brother and now reduced to negligible remains; he also worked on a *Supper* in the cloister of the Camaldolese, later destroyed. He left David and Benedetto to execute the frescoes in the Sala dei Gigli in Palazzo Vecchio (1482–84); he also worked with David on the museum of the Annunciation above the Porta della Mandorla (1490–91) and restored the museums of the abbey of Casteltrudale in Pistoia (1493–94). David was in fact known especially as a musician (a signed and dated organ dated 1496 is in the Musée de Cluny), an activity he pursued after his brother’s death. His collaboration is also recognizable in the Sistine Chapel fresco *The Crossing of the Red Sea*, executed to Domenico’s design along with his brother Benedetto; in the frescoes of the Sassetti Chapel and in the cycle in the choir of Santa Maria Novella, where he stands out for a more intense naturalism in the depiction of figures and a more contrasted handling of light and shadow (*Annunciation to Zechariah*, *Visitation*). To him is attributed the panel with *St Lucy* in Santa Maria Novella (1494) and the *SS Sebastian and Roch* in the Museo Civico in Pisa.
A lesser figure was BENEDETTO (b. in Florence in 1458, d. there on 17 July 1497), trained in miniature work and then an assistant to his brother Domenico in nearly all his large-scale works; affinities between the *Way to Calvary* in the Louvre and the *Coronation of the Virgin* in Narni suggest that he painted the latter, executed in collaboration with Domenico in 1484. In France, where he stayed between 1485 and 1493, he left some signed works (*Adoration* at Aigueperse), in which Ghirlandaio-esque motifs blend with Flemish elements. A son of Domenico was RIDOLFO (1483–1561), trained in painting by David and later passing to the school of Lorenzo di Credi and Piero di Cosimo; from them he derived the luministic concerns that distinguished him even amid the eclecticism of his mature production. His earliest known work is the *Coronation* in the Louvre (1504); in the *Portrait of an Unknown Man* in the Pitti Palace, one of his finest works, and in the *Betrothal of St Catherine* in the Istituto della Quiete in Florence, he turns to Raphael; in the well-known *Portrait of a Goldsmith* in the Pitti, to Leonardo, while echoes of Fra Bartolomeo are present in the *Madonna of the Girdle* in Prato and in the two canvases of *St Zanobi* in the Uffizi. To him are also attributed the *Portrait of a Warrior* in the National Gallery, London (with influences from Pontormo), and that of *Lady with a Rabbit* in the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, for which the name of Piero di Cosimo has also been proposed.
[Also a good portraitist—and in this capacity he approached Salviati—was MICHELE TOSINI (b. 1503, d. 1577).]
