GHIRLANDAIO, Domenico
Italian Early Renaissance Painter, 1449-1494
Florentine painter, whose family name was Bigordi. He may have studied painting and mosaics under Alesso Baldovinetti. Ghirlandaio was an excellent technician. Keenly observant of the contemporary scene, he depicted many prominent Florentine personalities within his religious narrative paintings. Among his earliest frescoes are the Madonna with the Vespucci Family and the Last Supper (Church of the Ognissanti, Florence). He painted scenes from the life of Santa Fina (collegiate church in San Gimigniano) and frescoes in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. In 1481, Pope Sixtus IV called him to Rome, along with Botticelli, to decorate the Sistine Chapel. He painted the Calling of the First Apostles, a scene close in spirit to Masaccio. He returned to Florence to work on the frescoes in the Sassetti Chapel in Santa Trinita. He introduced Sassetti, Corsi, Poliziano, the Medici, and many other contemporaries as participants in the life of St. Francis. Ghirlandaio's most famous achievement is his fresco cycle of the life of Mary and St. John the Baptist for the choir of Santa Maria Novella. Michelangelo served an apprenticeship with him at this time and probably worked on these frescoes. Other examples of his art are the Adoration of the Magi (Uffizi); another Adoration (Hospital of the Innocents); a mosaic of the Annunciation for the Cathedral; a portrait of Francesco Sassetti and his son (Metropolitan Mus.);
ID: 63006 Baptism of Christ 1473 Fresco Sant'Andrea a Brozzi, San Donnino The fresco is in the tympanum above the Madonna and Child with Saints. Two angels are kneeling on the left bank of the river Jordan, shown as a little flat stream flowing towards us. They are holding the clothes of the person being baptized, who is clad only in a loincloth. Christ is standing in water up to his ankles. St John the Baptist, in a fur robe, is gathering up his cloak and stepping carefully on to a stone to baptize Christ. This fresco, because of its poorer quality, is frequently attributed to assistants from Ghirlandaio's workshop. It is a loose copy of the famous panel painting which Verrocchio painted with the help of his assistant Leonardo da Vinci. Ghirlandaio added the two praying angels on the right of his composition, and these, together with the corresponding figures on the other side of the river, form a compositional frame for the work.. This assumption that clear symmetrical balance is important shows that the artist was still rather conservative. Artist: GHIRLANDAIO, Domenico Painting Title: Baptism of Christ , 1451-1500 Painting Style: Italian , , religious
