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Updated: June 17, 2025
That Young Goldsmith, No. 207, which used to be given to Leonardo but is now Ridolfo Ghirlandaio's, is here; a Franciabigio, No. 43; a questioned Raphael, No. 44; a fine and sensitive head of one of the Gonzaga family by Mantegna, No. 375; the coarse head of Giovanni Bentivoglio by da Costa, No. 376; and a Pollaiuolo, No. 370, S. Jerome, whose fine rapt countenance is beautifully drawn.
Slowly they came, the grave, armoured knights riding with their visors up that all might see how well the tanner, Giovanni, and Enrico Lupi of the wine-shop, looked in chain mail; gay, velvet-clad pages carrying the silk-embroidered standards of their contrade with all the fine airs of the lads who stand about the bier of Saint Catherine in Ghirlandaio's fresco in the Duomo; lithe, slender alfieri tossing their flags, twisting them about in the carefully-concerted movements that look so easy and are so difficult, until the whole great Piazza was girdled with fluttering light and colour, while it echoed to the thrilling and disquieting beat of the drums.
Ghirlandaio's chief influences, however, were Masaccio, at the Carmine, Fra Lippo Lippi, and Verrocchio, who is thought also to have been Baldovinetti's pupil and whose Baptism of Christ, in the Accademia, painted when Ghirlandaio was seventeen, must have given Ghirlandaio the lines for his own treatment of the incident in this church.
There are, however, an interesting but restored series of scenes in the life of the Virgin by Taddeo Gaddi, Giotto's godson; a Madonna ascending to heaven, by Mainardi, who was Ghirlandaio's pupil, and so satisfactory a one that he was rewarded by the hand of his master's sister; and a pretty piece of Gothic sculpture with the Christ Child upon it.
We then come again to the Choir, with Ghirlandaio's urbane Florentine pageant in the guise of sacred history, and pass on to the next chapel, the Cappella Gondi, where that crucifix in wood is to be seen which Brunelleschi carved as a lesson to Donatello, who received it like the gentleman he was.
Be that as it may, he left Ghirlandaio's studio when he was sixteen years old, and never had another master. Thenceforward he worked out his own ideas in his giant strength, and was the pupil of none. The boy Francesco was still his friend, and together they went to study in the gardens of San Marco, where Lorenzo the Magnificent had collected many statues and works of art.
Her face is very much like some faces in the early pictures; little, dry, definite faces that must have had a good deal of expression, but almost always the same one. Indeed I can show you her portrait in a fresco of Ghirlandaio's. I hope you don't object to my speaking that way of your aunt, eh? I've an idea you don't. Perhaps you think that's even worse.
As he took to sculpture, however, before he was out of Ghirlandaio's hands, there are few traces of any activity in painting until 1506, when he was engaged on the designs for the great battle-piece for the Council Hall at Florence. The one easel picture of which Vasari makes any mention, the tondo in the Uffizi, is the only one besides those already noted which is known to exist.
Many a painter has failed in the large space or made only a perfunctory success, but in the small has achieved real feeling. Gentile's Holy Family on its way to Egypt is never to be forgotten. Ghirlandaio's picture, which is the neighbour of Gentile's, is as a whole nearer life and one of his most attractive works.
Next above, on the left we have the Presentation of the Virgin and on the right her Marriage. The Presentation is considered by Mr. Davies to be almost wholly the work of Ghirlandaio's assistants, while the youthful Michelangelo himself has been credited with the half-naked figure on the steps, although Mr. Davies gives it to Mainardi. Mainardi again is probably the author of the companion scene.
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