Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/274

232 on the rocks and running stream, and the rose-bushes in the garden, are lovingly reproduced, and the aged women who watch by the bedside wear the white caps and laced bodices of the peasants of the district. In the other fresco, Santa Fina lies in the last sleep, and her dead hand is lifted to heal the paralysed arm of the old nurse kneeling at her side, while a little choirboy kisses her feet and an angel tolls the bell. The scene with all its simple details is full of pathos, and the grave priest who reads the last prayers, and the acolytes whose whole thoughts are occupied with the heavy cross and candles they bear, are closely studied from life. On this occasion Ghirlandajo was assisted by Sebastiano Mainardi, a painter of San Gimignano, who married his sister and executed many of the works ascribed to his more famous brother-in-law, both at San Gimignano and in other places.

Soon after his return to Florence Ghirlandajo married, and is described in an income-tax return of 1480 as living in his father's house, but being without a settled home, and having a wife of nineteen, named Costanza. His next works of importance were the Cenacolo and St. Jerome, which he painted in the convent and church of Ognissanti, in 1480. The aged Saint is represented seated, pen in hand, at his writing-desk, and the variegated pattern of the table-cloth, the candle, hour-glass, inkstand and scissors, and the Cardinal's hat and water-flask on the shelf, are all exactly reproduced. The Last Supper, which the painter afterwards repeated with little variation in the smaller refectory of San Marco, is set in a Tuscan garden where ilex and laurels, orange and pomegranate trees grow up the arches of the loggia,