Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/281

1494] Ficino, Cristoforo Landino and Lorenzo's tutor, Gentile de' Becchi; on the other, we see the painter, with his aged father, and his brother David, and brother-in-law Sebastiano Mainardi, the assistants who helped in the decoration of the choir. Giovanna degli Albizzi, the fair maiden who, on the 16th of June, 1486, became the bride of Lorenzo Tornabuoni, is here in her stiff brocades and rich jewels, with her young sister-in-law Lodovica and many noble dames, on their way to visit the mother and new-born babe. With her we enter the chamber where the mother lies on her couch, and friends are wishing her joy, while the nurse rocks the baby, and the maids prepare its bath. We see the frieze of singing and dancing children on the wall, the elegant Renaissance columns of the loggia, and we note how, in his anxiety to display his knowledge of perspective and anatomy, the painter has introduced a naked beggar sitting on the floor, and a peasant-woman poising a basket of fruit on her head, while a perfect gale of wind blows out the skirts of the maid who pours out the water for the child's bath.

These frescoes, which were finally completed in 1490, filled the Tornabuoni with delight and wonder, and Ghirlandajo was next employed to paint the chapel of their villa near Fiesole, which was unfortunately destroyed by floods in the next century. Many of the master's finest tempera pictures were painted during the four years when he was at work in Santa Maria Novella. The large Coronation, at Narni, was finished in 1486, and the round Adoration, in the Uffizi, bears the date of 1487. This subject was repeated in the altar-piece of the