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Updated: June 6, 2025
The companion to this picture represents the angel appearing to S. Zacharias, and here again Ghirlandaio gives us contemporary Florentines, portraits of distinguished Tornabuoni men and certain friends of eminence among them. In the little group low down on the left, for example, are Poliziano and Marsilio Ficino, the Platonist.
His full name was Domenico or Tommaso di Currado di Doffo Bigordi, but his father Tommaso Bigordi, a goldsmith, having hit upon a peculiarly attractive way of making garlands for the hair, was known as Ghirlandaio, the garland maker; and time has effaced the Bigordi completely.
The great churches of Florence A Dominican cathedral The "Decameron" begins Domenico Ghirlandaio Alessio Baldovinetti The Louvre The S. Maria Novella frescoes Giovanni and Lorenzo Tornabuoni Ruskin implacable Cimabue's Madonna Filippino Lippi Orcagna's "Last Judgment" The Cloisters of Florence The Spanish Chapel S. Dominic triumphant Giotto at his sweetest The "Wanderer's" doom The Piazza, as an arena.
But the work of the fifteenth century does not go beyond filling up the programme indicated by the Giottesques; and it is only after the men of the sixteenth century have been enabled to completely realise all that the men of the fourteenth century had indicated, that art, with Michelangelo, Tintoret, and still more with the great painters of Spain and Flanders, proceeds to encounter problems of foreshortening, of light and shade, of atmospheric effect, that could never have been imagined by the contemporaries of Giotto, nor even by the contemporaries of Ghirlandaio and the Bellini.
Now, one of the lads who studied under Domenico made a pen-drawing of some women, draped, after Ghirlandaio.
But when the facts were explained, and it was shown that the Ricci arms had indeed been placed in the most honourable part, they were obliged to be content, though they vowed vengeance against the Tournabuoni. Neither did Ghirlandaio get his extra two hundred gold pieces, for although Giovanni was delighted with the frescoes he never paid the price he had promised.
They belong to the chapel of the palace, and into this holy closet we were now conducted. It is large enough to accommodate comfortably perhaps thirty worshippers, and is quite covered with frescos by Ghirlandaio in good preservation, and with remnants enough of gilding and bright color to show how splendid the chapel must have been when the Medicean Grand Dukes used to pray here.
'I never trouble myself about it, said Ghirlandaio. 'Life is too short to attend to other men's work. It takes all my care and attention to look after mine own. But see, here comes the great Michelangelo himself to listen to our criticism. The curious, rugged face of the great artist looked good-naturedly on the company, but his strong knotted hands waved aside their greetings.
In the paintings of the Giottesques, and in the paintings of the serious, or duller, masters of the fifteenth century Ghirlandaio, Rosselli, Filippino, those for whom the fairy tale could exist no more than for Michelangelo or Andrea del Sarto the chief interest in this episode is the Holy Family, the miraculous Babe whom these great folk came so far to see.
'I will give thee twelve hundred gold pieces when it is done, said Giovanni Tournabuoni, 'and if I like it well, then shalt thou have two hundred more. Here was good pay indeed. Ghirlandaio set to work with all speed, and day by day the frescoes grew. For four years he worked hard, from morning until night, until at last the walls were covered.
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