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Updated: June 14, 2025
What, after all, remains the grandest quality of Ghirlandajo is his powerful drawing of characteristic heads. They are as various as they are vigorous. What a nation of strong men must the Florentines have been, we feel while gazing at his frescoes. In many houses he painted roundels with his own hand, and of naked women plenty.
Signorelli's frescoes at Orvieto, at once the latest works of the fifteenth century, and the latest works of an old man nurtured in the traditions of Benozzo Gozzoli and of Piero della Francesca, mark the beginning of the maturity and perfection of Italian art. From them Michael Angelo learns what he could not be taught even by his master Ghirlandajo, the grand and cold realist.
Since the intellectual unity gained by the Italians in the age of the Renaissance was chiefly due to the Florentines, it is a matter of some moment to reconsider the direct influences brought to bear upon the arts in Florence during the fifteenth century. I have chosen Ghirlandajo as the representative of painting in that period.
The whole composition is full of life and character, and that sort of elegance peculiar to Ghirlandajo. In the composition of Albert Durer we see the entrance of the temple on the left, and the child Mary with flowing hair ascending the steps; behind her stand her parents and other personages, and in front are venders of provisions, doves, &c., which are brought as offerings.
Among the goldsmiths were Orcagna, Ghiberti, Ghirlandajo, Antonio del Pollaiuolo, Francia, Verrocchio, Andrea del Sarto.
Ghirlandajo was lavish in his employment of rich Florentine costumes and architecture. He even made the legends of the saints and the histories of the Bible appear as if they had happened under the shadow of Brunelleschi's duomo and Giotto's campanile, and within sound of the flow of the Arno. In the peculiar colouring used in fresco painting Ghirlandajo excelled.
To enlarge upon this point is hardly necessary; or it would be easy to prove from documentary evidence that artists so eminent as Simone Martini, Gentile da Fabriano, Perugino, and Ghirlandajo kept open shops, where customers could buy the products of their craft from a highly-finished altar-piece down to a painted buckler or a sign to hang above the street-door.
Ghirlandajo's pictures may be found in the Louvre, the Berlin Museum, the Dresden, Munich, and London galleries. Most children will find it hard to see their beauty. Great men are likely to come in groups, and with Ghirlandajo there are associated Botticelli and Fra Filippo Lippi.
Masaccio, Ghirlandajo, Signorelli, turn the wall into a mere badly made frame; a gigantic piece of cardboard would do as well, and better; the colours melt into one another, the figures detach themselves at various degrees of relief; those upon the ceiling and pendentives are frequently upside down; yet these figures, which are so difficult to see, are worth seeing only in themselves, and not in relation to their position.
Angelo drew superior designs, created new art-ideas, was more clever in all his undertakings than any other pupil even ahead of his master; and almost at once Ghirlandajo became furiously jealous. This enmity between pupil and master was the beginning of Angelo's many misfortunes. One day he got into a dispute with a fellow student, Torregiano, who broke his nose.
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