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Domenico Ghirlandaio was born on June 2, 1449, in Florence, Città Metropolitana di Firenze, Toscana, Italy. He was the eldest of six children of the goldsmith Tommaso Bigordi and his first wife Antonia di ser Paolo Paoli. Domenico and his brothers Davide and Benedetto Ghirlandaio survived childhood. His nickname "Ghirlandaio" was derived from his father’s skill in making garlands for the hair of Florentine women.
According to Giorgio Vasari, Domenico studied painting with Alessio Baldovinetti.
Ghirlandaio painted sweeping, well-filled but uncrowded compositions and easy portrait likenesses. He was interested in classical antiquity and aware of contemporary Flemish painting. He supervised a large shop of assistants, chief among whom were his brothers Davide and Benedetto and his brother-in-law, Bastiano Mainardi. The chief problem in Ghirlandaio scholarship is the sorting out of his work from that of his various associates.
A recently uncovered fresco, the Madonna of Mercy and the Lamentation over Christ, in the Church of Ognissanti, Florence, is among Ghirlandaio's earliest (circa 1475) extant works. The fresco, painted for the Vespucci family, displays Ghirlandaio's characteristic skill at portraiture and includes a portrait of Amerigo Vespucci.
In the frescoes (ca. 1475) in the Chapel of S. Fina in the Collegiata, San Gimignano, Ghirlandaio blended painted with real architecture to create open designs filled with portraits of the local citizens. One scene, the Funeral of St. Fina, includes a cityscape depicting the towers of San Gimignano.
In the Last Supper (1480) in the Church of Ognissanti refectory Ghirlandaio painted an extra bay into the scene, which appears to continue the real architecture of the refectory into the fresco. This device is remarkably effective, though it somewhat detracts from the story. The iconography is traditional, with Judas seated opposite Christ, but Ghirlandaio seems to anticipate Leonardo da Vinci in his arrangement of the disciples into groups of twos and threes.
Ghirlandaio's fresco, the Calling of Peter and Andrew, in the Sistine Chapel (1481-1482), Rome, is especially successful in its sense of openness and is one of the clearest and most easily read in the chapel. Characteristically, the "calling" is witnessed by crowds of onlookers and contains numerous contemporary portraits.
The Sassetti Chapel frescoes (1486) in Sta Trinita, Florence, are among Ghirlandaio's best work. The episodes, of the life of St. Francis, are embellished by contemporary Florentine settings and personalities. In the lunette scene depicting Francis receiving the rules of the order, the setting is the Piazza della Signoria with a view of the Loggia dei Lanzi. Among those witnessing the event are Lorenzo the Magnificent, Francesco Sassetti (the donor), and the writer Angelo Poliziano. The scene showing Francis resuscitating a child is set in the Piazza Sta Trinita with views of the bridge and Church of Sta Trinita.
The most extensive fresco cycle Ghirlandaio executed, in the choir of the church of S. Maria Novella, Florence, was commissioned on September 1, 1485, by Giovanni Tornabuoni. The artist promised to complete the project by May 1490. The frescoes tell the stories of St. John the Baptist and the Virgin Mary in 14 separate scenes arranged in four registers along the sidewalls of the choir. The style makes it clear that much of the actual painting was done by assistants. Recently restored, the frescoes are exceptionally effective decoration.
Ghirlandaio did a number of panel paintings. He preferred working in tempera, although he undoubtedly was familiar with the oil technique. In the Adoration of the Shepherds (1485) the swarthy peasant types seem to derive from Hugo van der Goes's Portinari Altarpiece. One of Ghirlandaio's most appealing panels is the Adoration of the Magi (1488). As in most of his work, the colors tend to be rather harsh and contrasty; nonetheless, the scene has a quiet piety and charm. It includes a particularly fine landscape viewed through the posts of the shed behind the Virgin and Child. Two portraits, Francesco Sassetti and His Son and the Grandfather with His Grandson, are noteworthy for their restrained gentleness. Ghirlandaio's last panel, the Visitation (1491), is rather simple in design and seems to anticipate the balanced compositions of the High Renaissance.
Domenico Ghirlandaio was the leading fresco painter in Florence in the late 15th century. His frescoes, with their numerous portraits of members of the leading aristocratic families, provide a unique panorama of contemporary Florentine life.
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. His most notable Florentine cycles are in the Sassetti chapel in Santa Trinità (1483-1485) and in the choir, patronized by the Tornabuoni family, in Santa Maria Novella (1486-1490). Ghirlandaio used a method of drawing that helped to define forms with the use of cross-hatching to vary lighting and shading.
Running a large workshop in Florence, Ghirlandaio was briefly the teacher of Michelangelo. Some of Michelangelo’s early drawings show indications of Ghirlandaio’s influence. He also used this cross-hatching method but with more powerful lines.
Madonna and Child
Decoration of the Sala del Gigli
1484Meeting of Augustus and the Sibyl
1485Portrait of Giovane Donna
1488Marriage of Mary
1490Vaulting of the Sassetti Chapel
1485Expulsion of Joachim
1490Portrait of the Donor Nera Corsi Sassetti
1485The Trial by Fire, St. Francis before the Sultan of Egypt
1485Last Supper
1476St. Dominic Burning Heretical Writings
1490Study of Garments
1491Herod's Banquet
1490Decoration of the Sala del Gigli
1484Coronation of the Virgin
1483St. Christopher
Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints
1479St. Mark the Evangelist
1490The Nativity
1492Vaulting of the Tornabuoni Chapel
1490St. Jerome in his Study
1480Annunciation closeup
1489Adoration of the Shepherds
1485Madonna and Child with St. Sebastian and St. Julian
1473Francesco Sassetti and His Son Teodoro
1487St. Barbara Crushing Her Infidel Father
1473Last Supper
1480Annunciation
1482St. Matthew the Evangelist
1490The Nativity
1492Announcement of Death to St. Fina
1475Preaching of St. John the Baptist
1490Coronation of the Virgin
1486The Coronation of the Virgin
1483The Birth of Mary
1490Angel Appearing to Zacharias
1490Portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni
St. Barbara
Virgin Mary
The Adoration of the Magi
Renunciation of Worldly Goods
Portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni
Madonna and Child enthroned with St. Dionysius, Aeropagita, Domenic, Clement and Thomas Aquinas
The Calling of St. Peter and St. Andrew
St. John the Baptist in the Desert
Apse
Portrait of the Donor Giovanni Tornabuoni
Madonna and Child
St. Stephen, St. Jacobo, St. Peter
1493Confirmation of the Rule
Adoration of the Child
St. Jerome
A Sibyl
Baptism of Christ
Presentation of the Virgin
St. Stephen
David
St. Stephen the Martyr
Ludovica Tornabuoni
Giovanna Tornabuoni and Her Accompaniment
Confirmation of the Rule
St. John the Evangelist
1486Madonna in Glory with Saints
St. Luke
Madonna and Child Enthroned with Four Angels, the Archangels Michael and Raphael, and St. Gusto and St. Zenobius
Study
Portrait of Francesco Sassetti
Coronation of the Virgin
St. John the Evangelist on the Island of Patmos
Decoration of the Sala del Gigli
Death and Assumption of the Virgin
Study
Portrait of Lucrezia Tornabuoni
Portrait of a Girl
The Virgin and Child
The Death of St. Francis
The Miracle of a Child
Altarpiece of St. Vincent Ferrer
Study of Two Women
Madonna
The Adoration of the Magi
Elderly Woman
Portrait of a Lady
Zacharias Writes Down the Name of His Son
1490The Calling of St. Peter
Old Man with a Young Boy
1490The Annunciation
The Visitation
Stigmata of St. Francis
Baptism of Christ
Altarpiece of St. Vincent Ferrer
Last Supper
Christ in Glory with St. Benedict (c.480-547), St. Romuald (c.952-1027), St. Attinia, St. Grecinia and the donor, abbot Buonvicini
Portrait of a Young Woman
Madonna and Child
The Funeral of St. Fina
Adoration of the Magi
St. Catherine of Siena and St. Lawrence
Portrait of the Donor Francesca Pitti Tornabuoni
1490Martyrdom of St. Peter Martyr
Piero, Eldest Son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, Called Piero the Unfortunate
St. Antony
Lamentation over the Dead Christ
Madonna of Mercy
Slaughter of the Innocents
The Visitation
Madonna of Mercy and Lamentation
The Birth of St. John the Baptist
Quotes from others about the person
William 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."
About 1480, Ghirlandaio married Costanza di Bartolommeo Nucci (d. 1485). They had two sons, Bartolommeo, born in 1481, who entered the Camaldolese Order, and Ridolfo (1483 - 1561), who was, like his father, a painter and a friend of Raphael. In 1488, the artist took Antonia di ser Paolo di Simone Paoli as his second wife.
