GHIRLANDAIO, FAMILY. - A family of Florentine painters. The eldest was DOMENICO, b. in Florence in 1449, d. there on 11 Jan. 1494: his father Tommaso Bigordi, a goldsmith, was given the name G., according to Vasari, for having made garlands of rare and precious workmanship for the "adornment of the heads of Florentine maidens."
According to tradition, Domenico's master was Alessio Baldovinetti: from an examination of his earliest works, moreover, the influence of Domenico Veneziano and of Verrocchio appears decisive in the painter's artistic formation (frescoes in the Vespucci chapel in Ognissanti, in the Church of Cercina, in S. Andrea di Brozzi), to which are joined reminiscences of Lippi, of Benozzo, of Castagno and of the other major Tuscans active around the middle of the century. The frescoes with The Vision and The Obsequies of St. Fina in the Collegiate Church of S. Gimignano (1475) already offer the measure of Domenico's luminous style, which animates the sacred scene with living figures, placed, through the opening of the background (cf. Obsequies of St. Fina), in the setting of the typical medieval small town. This narrative interest in the settings and customs of the time also characterizes the major cycles frescoed by Domenico, in the Sassetti chapel in S. Trinita (consecrated in 1485: Stories of St. Francis) and in the choir of S. Maria Novella (Stories of the Virgin and of the Baptist, completed in 1490), where he describes the Florentine square in which the church stands (St. Francis raises to life a child of the Spini family), or a luxurious Renaissance "interior" (Nativity of the Virgin), taking equal delight in an elegant ornamental scheme and in the rich effect of a brocade. And this earned him the title of faithful interpreter of the happiest and most splendid epoch of Medicean Florence.
His love of detail made him open to the influence of Flemish painting, brought to Florence by Hugo van der Goes with the Portinari triptych (cf. the St. Jerome in the church of Ognissanti, 1480; and the two panels — in which he availed himself of assistants — with the Adoration of the Magi respectively on the altar of the Sassetti chapel, 1485, and in the Ospedale degli Innocenti, 1488), just as his interest in the world around him made him a portraitist. Lively portraits are those of the personages of his time introduced to animate — more as protagonists than as chorus — the narration of the sacred episodes, and the masterpiece of the artist in this field may be considered the gathered figures of the kneeling donors in the Sassetti chapel. But such images do not harm the balance, the vast compositional breath, always present whenever the artist works without leaving too large a part to his assistants (Calling 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 S. Maria Novella) and to which is due the importance of Domenico with respect to the sixteenth-century developments achieved by Fra Bartolomeo and by Raphael himself.
A character of serene harmony is presented by the Last Supper in the refectory of Ognissanti (1480), inspired by that of Andrea del Castagno, from which it differs through the quiet luminosity of its color; fused in the clear light that penetrates from the background, open onto a flowering garden in a manner analogous to the altarpiece with the Madonna in throne, St. Zanobi and St. Justus (today in the Uffizi), which is one of the best expressions of the painter's style. His very vast production did not always reach the same quality: this was due also to the large participation of assistants, who worked under the guidance and on cartoons of the master in the cycles of frescoes and in the panels. Among them are to be remembered Bartolomeo di Giovanni, Fr. Granacci, J. del Tedesco, Domenico's brother-in-law, Bastiano Mainardi, and in particular the brothers David and Benedetto.
With DAVID, b. in Florence on 14 March 1452, d. there on 10 April 1525, Domenico assumed the task of the decoration of the Library of Sixtus IV in Rome (1475), then entrusted almost totally to his brother and of which negligible remains survive today; he worked on a Supper in the cloister of the Camaldolese, later destroyed; to David and to Benedetto he then left the execution of the frescoes in the hall of the lilies in the Palazzo Vecchio (1482-84); again with David he worked on the mosaic of the Annunciation above the Porta della Mandorla (1490-91) and restored the mosaics of the apse of the Cathedral of Pistoia (1493-94). David was in fact known especially as a mosaicist (a mosaic of his, signed and dated 1496, is in the Musée de Cluny), an activity to which he devoted himself after the death of his brother. His collaboration is recognizable furthermore in the Sistine fresco with the Crossing of the Red Sea, executed on a design by Domenico together with his brother Benedetto; in the frescoes of the Sassetti chapel and in the cycle of the choir of S. Maria Novella, where he stands out for a more intense naturalism in the representation of the figures and for a more contrasted handling of lights and shadows (Announcement to Zechariah, Visitation). To him is attributed the panel with St. Lucy in S. Maria Novella (1494) and the Sts. Sebastian and Roch in the Museo Civico of Pisa.
A lesser personality was BENEDETTO, b. in Florence in 1458, d. there on 17 July 1497, trained in miniature painting and then assistant to his brother Domenico in almost all the works of large scale: affinities between the Ascent to Calvary of the Louvre and the Coronation of Mary at Narni cause this work, commissioned from Domenico in 1484, to be attributed to him. In France, where he stayed between 1485 and 1493, he left some signed works (Adoration of Aigueperse) in which Ghirlandaio motifs merge with Flemish ones. Son of Domenico was RIDOLFO (1483-1561), trained in painting by David and then passed to the school of Lorenzo di Credi and of Piero di Cosimo; from the latter he drew those luministic concerns that distinguished him even amid the eclecticism of his more mature production. His first known work is the Coronation in the Louvre (1504); in the Portrait of an Unknown Man in the Pitti, one of his best works, and in the Marriage 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 reminiscences of Fra Bartolomeo are present in the Madonna of the Girdle at 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 of London (with influences of Pontormo) and that of a Lady with a Rabbit, in the Yale collection of New Haven, for which the name of Piero di Cosimo has been put forward.
[A good portraitist — and as such he approached Salviati — was also MICHELI TOSINI (b. in 1503, d. in 1577), called Ridolfo del G. because of his collaboration with Ridolfo, begun in 1525 (Betrothal of St. Catherine, in the Istituto della Quiete in Florence, in comparison with the work on the same subject by Ridolfo; Madonna of the Girdle, Museum of S. Marco in Florence). He was later influenced by the monumental researches of Andrea del Sarto (Madonna and Saints of the Florentine Academy) and finally, having been taken on by Vasari as an assistant in the decoration of the Palazzo Vecchio, he became Michelangelesque through the mediation that Salviati had provided of that master and of Parmigianino; typical products of this period are the Venus and the Night in the Colonna Gallery in Rome, harsh in modelling and color. - See pl. XXVII.
Bibliography13 works
Maria Vittoria Brugnoli