Domenico Ghirlandaio

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Domenico Ghirlandaio
Church of Ognissanti, Palazzo Vecchio, Santa Trinita, Tornabuoni Chapel in Florence and Sistine Chapel, Rome
MovementItalian Renaissance

Domenico di Tommaso Curradi di Doffo Bigordi (2 June 1448 – 11 January 1494), professionally known as Domenico Ghirlandaio (also spelt as Ghirlandajo),

Verrocchio, the Pollaiolo brothers and Sandro Botticelli. Ghirlandaio led a large and efficient workshop that included his brothers Davide Ghirlandaio and Benedetto Ghirlandaio, his brother-in-law Bastiano Mainardi from San Gimignano, and later his son Ridolfo Ghirlandaio.[4] Many apprentices passed through Ghirlandaio's workshop, including the famous Michelangelo.[4] His particular talent lay in his ability to posit depictions of contemporary life and portraits of contemporary people within the context of religious narratives, bringing him great popularity and many large commissions.[5]

Life and works

Early years

Ghirlandaio was born Domenico di Tommaso di Currado di Doffo Bigordi. He was the eldest of six children born to Tommaso Bigordi by his first wife Antonia di ser Paolo Paoli; of these, only Domenico and his brothers and collaborators Davide and Benedetto Ghirlandaio survived childhood. Tommaso had two more children by his second wife, also named Antonia, whom he married in 1464. Domenico's half-sister Alessandra (b. 1475) married the painter Bastiano Mainardi in 1494.[6] Both Ghirlandaio's father and his uncle, Antonio, were setaiuolo a minuto (dealers of silks and related objects in small quantities).[citation needed]

Perugino.[9]

First works in Florence, Rome, and Tuscany

Ghirlandaio excelled in the painting of

Collegiate Church of that city. The frescos, executed from 1477 to 1478, depict two miraculous events associated with the death of Saint Fina.[10]

Pope Gregory announces the death of Santa Fina, in the Collegiate Church of San Gimignano (about 1477)

In 1480, Ghirlandaio painted

St. Zenobius (1482) in the Sala del Giglio, an over-life-sized work with an elaborate architectural framework, figures of Roman heroes, and other secular details, striking in its perspective and compositional skill.[11]

In 1481, Ghirlandaio was summoned to

Cosimo Roselli who was also part of the commission.[13] Ghirlandaio is known to have created other works in Rome, now lost.[7] His future brother-in-law, Sebastiano Mainardi, assisted him with these commissions and in the early frescoes at San Gimignano where Mainardi is now thought to have painted an Annunciation sometimes attributed to Ghirlandaio.[citation needed
]

In 1484, an agent of

Ludovico il Moro wrote to his lord, describing the works of the individual artists whose works he had seen in Florence: "Domenico Ghirlandaio [is] a good painter on panel and better in mural fresco; his style is very good; he is active and very creative."[14]

Later works in Tuscany

The Confirmation of the Franciscan Rule from the Sassetti Chapel, with portraits of Lorenzo de' Medici and his family occupying prominent positions as spectators to the event

Between 1482 and 1485, Ghirlandaio painted a fresco cycle in the

Agnolo Poliziano
. The Resuscitation shows the painter's own likeness.

In 1483, there arrived in Florence a masterpiece of the Flemish painter Hugo van der Goes. Now known as the Portinari Altarpiece, it was an Adoration of the Shepherds, commissioned by Tommaso Portinari, an employee of the Medici Bank. The painting was in oil paint, not the tempera employed in Florence, and demonstrated the flexibility of that medium in the painting of textures and intensity of light and shade. The aspect of the painting that had a profound effect on Ghirlandaio was the naturalism with which the shepherds were depicted.[5]

The Adoration of the Shepherds, Sassetti Chapel
, containing a portrait of Ghirlandaio as one of the Shepherds

Ghirlandaio painted the altarpiece of the Sassetti chapel, an Adoration of the Shepherds, in 1485. It is in this painting that he particularly shows his indebtedness to the Portinari Altarpiece. The shepherds, among whom is a self-portrait of the artist, are portrayed with a realism that was an advance in Florentine painting at that time.[5] The altarpiece is still in position in Santa Trinita, surrounded by the six frescoes depicting the Life of St. Francis of which it became the centrepiece. On either side are portraits of the kneeling donors, and although the figures are in fresco on the wall, they occupy the same position and relationship to the central scene of the Adoration that the donors do on the outer panels of the Portinari triptych.[15]

Immediately after the commission for the Sassetti Chapel, Ghirlandaio was asked to renew the frescoes in the choir of the

St. John the Baptist.[4]

Demetrios Chalkondyles

In this cycle, there are no fewer than twenty-one portraits of the Tornabuoni and Tornaquinci families. In the Angel appearing to Zacharias, there are portraits of members of the Medici Academy:

Agnolo Poliziano, Marsilio Ficino and others.[4] The Tornabuoni Chapel was completed in 1490 with the altarpiece probably executed with the assistance of Domenico's brothers, Davide and Benedetto;[4] and a stained glass window to Ghirlandaio's own design.[citation needed] Domenico painted an altarpiece for Giovanni Tornabuoni to commemorate his first wife who had died in childbirth, as had Giovanni's mother. The Virgin with the Two Marys is now in the Louvre. It is the only time that the two Marys are seen without Mary Magdalen. They usually are depicted together as the Three Marys. However, Mary Magdalene was never pregnant[citation needed
] so was not a fitting subject for this altarpiece.

Visitation, c. 1491

Although mainly known for his fresco cycles Ghirlandaio painted a number of altarpieces including the Virgin Adored by Saints Zenobius, Justus and Others, painted for the church of Saint Justus, now in the

Visitation now in the Louvre, which bears the last ascertained date (1491) of all his works.[11] Ghirlandaio painted a number of panel portraits of known identities, such as his profile portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni, commissioned in 1488.[15] Perhaps his best known is the Portrait of an Old Man and his Grandson, remarkable for both the tenderness of expression and the realism with which the disfigured nose (rhinophyma) of the old man is depicted.[5]

According to Vasari, Ghirlandaio also painted several scenes of Classical subjects with nude figures, including a Vulcan and his Assistants forging Thunderbolts, for

Lorenzo II de' Medici, but which no longer exists. He also produced designs for a number of mosaics including the Annunciation, on a portal of the Florence Cathedral.[4]

Death

Ghirlandaio died on 11 January 1494 of "pestilential fever" and was buried in Santa Maria Novella.[4][16] The day and month of his birth remain undocumented, but he is recorded as having died in early January of his forty-fifth year. He had been married twice and left six children. One of his three sons, Ridolfo Ghirlandaio, also became a painter. Although he had a long line of descendants, the family name died out in the seventeenth century, when its last members entered monasteries.[11]

Critical assessment and legacy

Ghirlandaio worked mainly in fresco, with a number of important works being executed in tempera. Vasari states that Ghirlandaio was the first to abandon, in great part, the use of gilding in his pictures, representing by painting any objects that were made of gold. This is not applicable to his entire oeuvre, as details in some paintings, for example, the altarpiece of the Adoration of the Shepherds (now in

Florence Academy) were rendered in gold leaf.[7]

The Birth of Mary, Tornabuoni Chapel (1485–90), appears to represent a domestic scene from the life of contemporary Florentine nobility

According to

linear perspective when measured.[4]

Ghirlandaio is credited as the teacher of Michelangelo. Francesco Granacci is another among his pupils.[4] According to Vasari, these two were sent by Ghirlandaio to the Medici Academy, when Lorenzo de' Medici requested his two best pupils. Although Michelangelo regarded himself as primarily a sculptor, in the sixteenth century he was to follow his master as a painter of frescos, at the Sistine Chapel.[17]

Ghirlandaio was highly praised by Vasari: "[Ghirlandaio] who, from his talent and from the greatness and the vast number of his works, may be called one of the most important and most excellent masters of the age..." In the nineteenth century Jacob Burckhardt and others praised him for his compositions, for his technical ability, and for the lifelike quality of his figures, seen by Archibald Joseph Crowe and Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle as being as innovative as those of Giotto had been.[9] By the late nineteenth century the appreciation of his work had waned and it was not until 1994, the five-hundredth anniversary of the artist's death, that interest in him was rekindled.[9][c] At this time a symposium was held and subsequently in-depth monographs on the artist were published. Rosenauer comments on the usefulness of Ghirlandaio's paintings as pictorial records for the historian.[9]

Works by Ghirlandaio

Portraits

Museu Calouste Gulbenkian

Altarpieces

The Madonna and Child adored by St Zenobius and St Justus, (c. 1483), Uffizi, Florence
The Innocenti Adoration of the Magi, (1488–89), Ospedale degli Innocenti, Florence
The Pala Tornabuoni, (c. 1490), Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Frescos

St Jerome, (1480), Ognissanti, Florence
The Calling of the Apostles, (1481), one of the series in the Life of Christ commissioned for the Sistine Chapel
The Last Supper, (1486) San Marco, Florence

Details

Detail of St Jerome in his Study, Still life objects include his cardinal's hat, spectacles, hourglass and seal
Detail of the landscape in The Stigmata of St Francis
Detail of The Last Supper in San Marco's refectory showing Ghirlandaio's skill at the natural portrayal of figures and at painting objects such as bottles, cherries and silver salt cellar

See also

Notes

  1. ^ UK: /ˌɡɪərlænˈd/ GHEER-lan-DY-oh, US: /ˌɡɪərlənˈd, ˌɡɪərlənˈdɑːj/ GHEER-lən-DY-oh, GHEER-lən-DAH-yoh,[1][2][3] Italian: [doˈmeːniko ɡirlanˈdaːjo].
  2. ^ According to Vasari the question of preserving the arms of the Ricci gave rise to litigation.
  3. ^ Note that Rosenauer's article erroneously states 1994 as the anniversary of the artist's birth rather than death.

References

  1. ^ "Ghirlandaio" (US) and "Ghirlandaio". Lexico UK English Dictionary. Oxford University Press. Archived from the original on 22 March 2020.
  2. ^ "Ghirlandaio". The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.). HarperCollins. Retrieved 31 May 2019.
  3. ^ "Ghirlandajo". Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. Retrieved 31 May 2019.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Vasari, Giorgio. "Domenico Ghirlandaio". Lives of the Painters. Archived from the original on 10 March 2015. Retrieved 11 May 2014.
  5. ^ a b c d e Toman, Rolf[full citation needed]
  6. ^ a b c Rossetti 1911.
  7. ^ Passavant, Gunter: Verrochio Sculptures Paintings & Drawings (Phaidon. London.1969) p.45
  8. ^ a b c d Rosenauer, Artur, Review of Domenico Ghirlandaio: Artist and Artisan by Jean K. Cadogan, Mutual Art.com, [1] (Sept 2003)
  9. ^ Vantaggi, Rosella, San Gimignano, Town of Fine Towers, Plurigraf (1979)
  10. ^ a b c d  One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domainRossetti, William Michael (1911). "Ghirlandajo, Domenico". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 11 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 922–923. Endnotes:
    • The biography of Ghirlandajo is carefully worked out in Crowe and Cavalcaselle's book.
    • A recent German work on the subject is that of Ernst Steinmann (1897).
    • See also Codex Escurialensis, ein Skizzenbuch aus der Werkstatt Domenico Ghirlandaios (texts and plates), by Chr. Hülsen, Adolf Michaelis and Hermann Egger in the Sonderschriften des österr. archäol. Instituts in Wien (2 vols., 1906)
    • cf. T. Ashby in Classical Quarterly (April 1909).
  11. ^ Cadogan, Jean K., and Andrea Muzzi. 2003 "Ghirlandaio family." Grove Art Online.
  12. ^ a b c Chastel 1983, p. 98.
  13. ^ Chastel 1983, p. 103.
  14. ^ .
  15. ^ Treccani biographical dictionary: "Il B. morì di peste l'11 genn. 1494 a Firenze e fu sepolto in S. Maria Novella."
  16. ^ Goldscheider, Ludwig, Michelangelo, Phaidon, (1953)

Sources

  • Chastel, André (1983). Art of the Italian Renaissance. UK: Alpine Fine Arts Collection. .

External links

Media related to Domenico Ghirlandaio at Wikimedia Commons