Domenico di Tommaso Curradi di Doffo Bigordi (2 June 1448 – 11 January 1494), professionally known asDomenico Ghirlandaio (also spelt asGhirlandajo),^[a] was anItalian Renaissance painter born inFlorence. Ghirlandaio was part of the so-called "third generation" of theFlorentine Renaissance, along withVerrocchio, thePollaiolo brothers andSandro Botticelli.

Domenico Ghirlandaio
Considered aself-portrait fromAdoration of the Magi, 1488
Born	Domenico di Tommaso Curradi di Doffo Bigordi (1448-06-02)2 June 1448 Florence,Republic of Florence
Died	11 January 1494(1494-01-11) (aged 45) Florence, Republic of Florence
Resting place	Basilica of Santa Maria Novella
Nationality	Italian
Known for	Painter
Notable work	Paintings in:Church of Ognissanti,Palazzo Vecchio,Santa Trinita,Tornabuoni Chapel in Florence andSistine Chapel, Rome
Movement	Italian Renaissance

Ghirlandaio led a large and efficient workshop that included his brothersDavide Ghirlandaio andBenedetto Ghirlandaio, his brother-in-lawBastiano Mainardi fromSan Gimignano, and later his sonRidolfo Ghirlandaio.^[4] Many apprentices passed through Ghirlandaio's workshop, includingMichelangelo.^[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]

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 collaboratorsDavide andBenedetto 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 painterBastiano Mainardi in 1494.^[6] Both Ghirlandaio's father and his uncle, Antonio, weresetaiuolo a minuto (dealers of silks and related objects in small quantities).^{[citation needed]}

Giorgio Vasari reported that Domenico was at first apprenticed to his father, who was agoldsmith. The nickname "Il Ghirlandaio" (garland-maker) came to Domenico from his father, who was famed for creating the metallicgarland-like headdresses worn by Florentine women.^[4] According to Vasari, Domenico made portraits of the passers-by and visitors to the shop: "when he painted the country people or anyone who passed through his studio he immediately captured their likeness".^[4] He was eventually apprenticed toAlesso Baldovinetti to study painting andmosaic.^[7] According to the art historian Günter Passavent, he was apprenticed in Florence toAndrea del Verrocchio.^[8] He maintained a close association with other Florentine painters includingBotticelli and with theUmbrian painterPerugino.^[9]

Ghirlandaio excelled in the painting offrescos and it is for his fresco cycles that he is best known. An early commission came to him in the 1470s from the Commune ofSan Gimignano to decorate theChapel of Santa Fina in theCollegiate Church of that city. The frescos, executed from 1477 to 1478, depict two miraculous events associated with the death ofSaint Fina.^[10]

In 1480, Ghirlandaio paintedSt. Jerome in His Study as a companion piece toBotticelli'sSaint Augustine in His Study in theChurch of Ognissanti, Florence.^[5] He also painted a life-sizedLast Supper in its refectory. From 1481 to 1485, he was employed on frescoes at thePalazzo Vecchio, painting among other works anApotheosis ofSt. Zenobius (1482) in theSala 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 toRome byPope Sixtus IV as one of a team of Florentine and Umbrian painters who he commissioned to create a series of frescos depicting popes and scenes from the Old and New Testaments on the walls of theSistine Chapel.^[12] Ghirlandaio painted theVocation of the Apostles.^[13] He also painted the now lostResurrection of Christ.^[13]The Crossing of the Red Sea has also been attributed to him, but is consistent with the style ofCosimo 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 anAnnunciation sometimes attributed to Ghirlandaio.^{[citation needed]}

In 1484, an agent ofLudovico 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]

Between 1482 and 1485, Ghirlandaio painted a fresco cycle in theSassetti Chapel ofSanta Trinita for the bankerFrancesco Sassetti, the powerful director of theMedici bank, whose Rome branch was headed byGiovanni Tornabuoni, Ghirlandaio's future patron. The cycle was of six scenes from the life ofSaint Francis of Assisi, includingSaint Francis obtaining fromPope Honorius the Approval of the Rules of His Order, the saint'sDeath and Obsequies and aResuscitation of a child of the Spini family, who had died as a result of a fall from a window.^[4] The first of these paintings contains portraits ofLorenzo de' Medici, Sassetti and Lorenzo's children with their tutor,Agnolo Poliziano. TheResuscitation shows the painter's own likeness.

In 1483, there arrived in Florence a masterpiece of the Flemish painterHugo van der Goes. Now known as thePortinari Altarpiece, it was anAdoration of the Shepherds, commissioned byTommaso Portinari, an employee of the Medici Bank. The painting was in oil paint, not thetempera 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]

Ghirlandaio painted thealtarpiece of the Sassetti chapel, anAdoration of the Shepherds, in 1485. It is in this painting that he particularly shows his indebtedness to thePortinari 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 theLife 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 thePortinari triptych.^[15]

Immediately after the commission for the Sassetti Chapel, Ghirlandaio was asked to renew the frescoes in the choir of theSanta Maria Novella, which formed the chapel of the Ricci family. The Tornabuoni and Tornaquinci families, who were much more prominent than the Ricci, undertook the cost of the restoration, with certain contractual conditions.^[b] TheTornabuoni Chapel frescoes were painted in four courses around the three walls between 1485 and 1490, the subjects being the lives of theVirgin Mary andSt. John the Baptist.^[4]

In this cycle, there are no fewer than twenty-one portraits of the Tornabuoni and Tornaquinci families. In theAngel 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 astained 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.

Although mainly known for his fresco cycles Ghirlandaio painted a number of altarpieces including theVirgin Adored by Saints Zenobius, Justus and Others, painted for the church of Saint Justus, now in theUffizi Gallery and theAdoration of the Magi in the Florentine orphanage, theOspedale degli Innocenti, in which he included a self-portrait. Other panel paintings includeChrist in Glory withRomuald and Other Saints, in the Badia ofVolterra and theVisitation now in theLouvre, 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 thePortrait 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 aVulcan and his Assistants forging Thunderbolts, forLorenzo II de' Medici, but which no longer exists. He also produced designs for a number of mosaics including theAnnunciation, on a portal of theFlorence Cathedral.^[4]

Ghirlandaio died on 11 January 1494 of "pestilential fever" and was buried inSanta 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]

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 theAdoration of the Shepherds (now inFlorence Academy) were rendered in gold leaf.^[7]

According toWilliam Michael Rossetti, "[Ghirlandaio's] scheme of composition is grand and decorous; his chiaroscuro excellent, and especially his perspectives, which he would design on a very elaborate scale by the eye alone; his colour is more open to criticism, but this remark applies much less to the frescoes than the tempera-pictures, which are sometimes too broadly and crudely bright."^[11] According to Vasari, his sense of perspective was so acute that he made drawings of ancient Roman monuments such as theColisseum in which he worked entirely by eye, that later proved to have mathematically accurate proportion andlinear perspective when measured.^[4]

Ghirlandaio is credited as the teacher ofMichelangelo.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 theSistine 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 centuryJacob 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 ofGiotto 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]

• Davide Ghirlandaio
• Benedetto Ghirlandaio
• Ridolfo Ghirlandaio

• Chastel, André (1983).Art of the Italian Renaissance. UK: Alpine Fine Arts Collection.ISBN 0-88168-139-3.

  Media related toDomenico Ghirlandaio at Wikimedia Commons

• Paintings by Domenico Ghirlandaio with details about each
• ghirlandaio.it, Museums and exhibitions in Florence
• Web Gallery of Art
• Ghirlandaio in Panopticon Virtual Art Gallery
• Ghirlandaio's Cappella Sassetti Frescoes
• Where to find Ghirlandaio's works in Florence
• Ghirlandaio and Renaissance Florence exhibition
• Italian Paintings: Florentine School, a collection catalog containing information about the artist and his works (see pages: 128–137).
• Domenico Ghirlandaio at the National Gallery of Art
• Carl Brandon Strehlke, "The Man of Sorrows (Christ Crowned with Thorns) by Domenico Ghirlandaio (cat. 1176a)^{[permanent dead link‍]}" inThe John G. Johnson Collection: A History and Selected Works^{[permanent dead link‍]}, a Philadelphia Museum of Art free digital publication.