During the generation which preceded the activity of Domenico
Ghirlandaio (1449-1494) (who appears in the official Catalogue under
the name of Grillandaio) the art of the painter had often been combined
with that of the architect and sculptor. In time the influence of the
goldsmith is seen in the inclination of the more prosaic painters,
among whom Ghirlandaio holds an important place, to subordinate the
pictorial qualities of their compositions to the gold-worker’s love
of ornamental detail and fanciful jewellery. Paintings carried out
in the goldsmith’s shop thus contained in the action of the figures,
the treatment of the draperies, and the fanciful head-dresses,
imitations of silver and bronze work. Domenico Bigordi owed the name
of Ghirlandaio, by which he is now generally known, to his having been
apprenticed to a goldsmith who acquired fame as a maker of the jewelled
coronals (_ghirlande_) that became fashionable. This pupil of Alessio
Baldovinetti, who was a craftsman quite as much as a painter, is
to-day best known by the large number of frescoes he painted in Tuscany.
[Illustration:
PLATE III.—DOMENICO GHIRLANDAIO
(1449-1494)