Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/278

236 Hardly had the master completed his frescoes of St. Francis, in the Trinità, than he set to work on another great series—the Lives of the Baptist and of the Virgin, in the choir of Santa Maria Novella. The commission to paint the walls originally adorned by Orcagna's ruined frescoes, was given to Ghirlandajo by Giovanni Tornabuoni—the uncle of Lorenzo de' Medici—who agreed to pay the artist the sum of 2,200 gold florins, and to add another 200, if he were satisfied with the result. When, however, at the end of four years the great series was completed, Tornabuoni expressed the utmost admiration for the work, but asked the painter to be content with the sum originally proposed. Ghirlandajo, who seems to have been singularly indifferent to gain, made no objection, but afterwards his patron's conscience reproached him for his want of liberality, and when the painter was ill at Pisa, in 1492, he sent him a gift of 100 florins. These twenty-one subjects have been much injured by damp, and restoration and the hand of inferior assistants is plainly seen in many of the best preserved portions. But as a splendid illustration of Florentine life, the whole series is of rare interest. On the one hand we have the public and official life of the Tornabuoni, their stately banquets and processions; on the other, we catch a glimpse of their private and domestic history. In the guests seated at Herod's feast, in the crowds who throng the temple court, we recognise the Tornabuoni and their kinsmen, the partners of the Medici bank, Gianfrancesco Ridolfi, Roderigo Sassetti and Andrea de' Medici. On one side we have a group of famous humanists—Angelo Poliziano, Marsilio