Page:Biographical catalogue of the principal Italian painters.djvu/104

 GHEZZI— GHIRLANDAJO. 73 His son, Pier Leone, was likewise a distinguished painter in his time; he was also engraver and architect, and was much employed by Clement XI. Pier Leone was idso a caricaturist ; he died 1755. {PascolL) GHIRLANDAJO, Domenico Bioob- JDI DEi«, 6. at Florence, 1449, d. 1408. Tuscan School. He was the son of Tommaso fiigordi, a goldsmith, who is said to have acquired the name of Ghirlandiyo from the garlands which he made for the Florentine children. Domenico has been pronounced by Vasari, one of the greatest masters of his age. He carried far to perfection what Masacdo had successfully com- menced. Instead of aiming at the perpetuation of the sentimental only, he felt fully the at least equal importance of the physical, and this spirit he carried into the most ordinary accessories of life, giving his works a social interest and intelligibility which at once made him extremely popular, and secured him a lasting fame with posterity. The life and Death of St. Francis, in the Sma. Trinita, contains some of the best specimens of Ghirlandiyo's style ; the Death of| the saint is the most striking of these works. The arrange- ment of the whole is simple and so- lemn. The figures are dignified, and the countenances are endowed with a noble and earnest expression of sym- pathy ; all with the truthMness of ordi- nary life. In the more material matters of art, in groupiag, in colour, and in the cast of the draperies, all is excel- lent, and, for its time, remarkable. The excellences of Fra Angelico and of Masaccio are substantially combined in the works of Domenico Ghirlandigo. He was the master of Michelangelo. Pavid and Benedetto Ghirlandigo were the brothers and assistants of Domenico. Works. Rome, Sistine Chapel, the Calling of Peter and Andrew. Flo- rence, Church of Ognissanti, a fresco of St Jerome; and a Last Supper in the refectory; the Sma. Trinita, 1480; in the Sassetti Chapel, scenes from the life of St. Francis, 1485 : Chiesa della Calza, the Madonna and Child, sur- rounded by Saints : Chiesa degl' Inno- oenti, the Adoration of the Magi (1488) : Santa Maria Novella, in the Tomabuoni Chapel, scenes from the lives of the Virgin and of John the Baptist, 1485- 90; among the former is the celebrated Portrait of Ginevra d^ Bend; these frescoes are engraved by Carlo Lasinio. Uffizj Gallery, an Adoration of the Magi, 1487 : ia the Academy, the Na* tivity, or Adoration of Shepherds, 1485 : Berlin Gallery, a Madonna with four Saints, and St. Jerome kneeling; the Portrait of a Female of the Fomabuoni family; the portrait of an old man ; and five other sacred subjects. Louvre, thd Visitation of the Virgin. ( Vasari.) GHIRLANDAJO, RrDOM-o, b, at Florence, 1482, d. about 1560. Tuscan School. He was the son of Domenico Ghirland^jo; from the school of his father and his uncle David, he passed into that of Fra Bartolomeo, and became the fiiend of Baphael dur- ing the residence of that painter at Florence. When called to Home by Julius 11. Baphael employed Bidolfo to complete a picture which he had begun for one of the churches at Siena ; and he invited him afterwards to assist him in .the works of the Vatican at Borne, but Bidolfo seems to have preferred his independence and his native place. Bidolfo Ghirlandajo belongs to the quattrocentisti, and was one of the best of these, and, indeed, in the earlier part of his career, one of the best painters of his time; but he had, un- fortunately for his reputation, such rivals as have rendered his name com* paratively obscure to posterity. His wcxrks were veiy numerous, and in