_Domenico Ghirlandajo_ (Florentine: 1449-1494).
The name of Ghirlandajo is one of the great landmarks in the
history of Florentine art. He was the first to introduce
portraits into "historical" pictures for their own sake, and
his series of frescoes in S. Maria Novella is particularly
interesting for the numerous portraits of his friends and
patrons, dressed in the costume of the period and introduced
into scenes of Florentine life and architecture. "There is a
bishop," says Vasari, "in his episcopal vestments and with
spectacles on his nose"--Ghirlandajo was the first master who
ventured to paint a figure wearing spectacles--"he is chanting
the prayers for the dead; and the fact that we do not hear
him alone demonstrates to us that he is not alive, but merely
painted." These groups of men and women in Ghirlandajo's
sacred compositions stand by in the costume of their day as
spectators of the incidents represented. He introduced also the
architecture of Florence in the richest display and in complete
perspective; and thus in his subjects taken from sacred story
he has left us "an exalted picture of life as it presented
itself to him in that day." "In the technical management of
fresco Ghirlandajo exhibits an unsurpassed finish, and worked
in it with extraordinary facility. He is said to have expressed
a wish that he might be allowed to paint in fresco the whole
of the walls which enclosed the city of Florence." He was
carried off by the plague in his forty-fifth year, but he had
already completed a very large body of work. He was the son of
a silk-broker named Bigordi. He and his brother David, who was
also a painter, were apprenticed to a goldsmith. Their master
probably manufactured the garlands of gold and silver which
were so much in favour with the women of Florence, and the
young men coming from his shop thus acquired the name of _del
Ghirlandajo_. Domenico early showed his bent by the striking
likenesses he drew of the people who passed by the goldsmith's
shop. He remained to the end of his life, says Ruskin, "a
goldsmith with a gift of portraiture." As early as 1475 his
reputation was established, for in that year he was called to
Rome to paint in the Sistine Chapel, where his "Calling of
Peter and Andrew" is still well preserved. Among the frescoes
executed after his return to Florence may be mentioned the "St.
Jerome" in the church of the Ognissanti, the history of "St.
Francis" in the Trinita, and the famous series in the choir of
S. Maria Novella. Copies from several of these works may be
seen in the Arundel Society's Collection. They are described by
Ruskin in his _Mornings in Florence_ (see also _Praeterita_,
vol. ii., and numerous incidental references in _Modern
Painters_). Ghirlandajo had not, perhaps, Giotto's dramatic
instinct for the heart of his subjects, but his frescoes are
remarkable, not only for their brilliantly decorative effect,
but for their noble and dignified realism. In the Uffizi at
Florence are his best easel pictures. There is also a fine
"Visitation" in the Louvre. Ghirlandajo was celebrated further
as a worker in mosaic (_e.g._ the mosaic over the north door of
the Cathedral at Florence). He was twice married. The painter
Ridolfo (1143) was a son by his first wife. Amongst his other
pupils were Granacci and Michael Angelo.
The girl is of the same type--with the same hair, "yellow as ripe
corn," and the same dainty primness--as the lady in Mr. Willett's
picture (for some years on loan in the National Gallery, and now in
the collection of M. Rodolphe Kann at Paris), but she was perhaps of
humbler station--a simple flower in her hair and a coral necklace being
her only ornaments.