Works by Domenico Ghirlandaio

Domenico Ghirlandaio ran a large workshop, which Michelangelo passed through as an apprentice, and painted bankers such as Francesco Sassetti and the Tornabuoni into chapel frescoes and portraits.

Ghirlandaio means garland-maker, a name the boy born Domenico Bigordi took from his father, who, Vasari says, made garland-like metal headdresses for Florentine women. Giorgio Vasari says he would portray people walking past or calling at the shop, catching each likeness at once. In An Old Man and his Grandson of 1490 he paints the old man's swollen, lumpy nose without softening it, while a boy in a red cap reaches up to his chest and gazes at his face; through the window a road winds towards a blue peak. A drawing of an old man with closed eyes, on pink-tinted paper and dated 1488, shows what looks like the same nose. Francesco Sassetti and His Son Teodoro makes the same pairing for the banker whose chapel in Santa Trinita he had frescoed: the father in red, a fair-haired boy looking up at him.

Giovanna Tornabuoni, painted in 1488, is seen in strict profile in gold brocade, with a brooch, a string of red beads and a book on the shelves behind her and a card bearing a Latin inscription and the year. The Visitation is dated 1491 on a pillar, the last date known on any of his works: Mary bends to the kneeling Elizabeth under an arch that opens on a harbour town, flanked by two women labelled M. Iachobi and M. Salome.

Sources: Wikidata, Wikipedia, Louvre, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Nationalmuseum, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum.