Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/357

1515] one of the artists who met to decide on the site of Michelangelo's David, and he remained the great man's intimate friend to the end of his life. Like Piero di Cosimo, Granacci was early employed by the Medici to direct their Carnival pageants and festivities, and erected a splendid triumphal arch, adorned with allegorical paintings and chiaroscuro figures, on the occasion of Pope Leo the Tenth's visit to Florence in 1515. In 1523, he assisted Andrea del Sarto and his companions in the decoration of Margherita Borgherini's bridal chamber, and the panels on the story of Joseph which he painted on that occasion are preserved in the Uffizi, while another set of small subjects on the life of S. Apollonia and other saints are divided between the Munich Gallery and the Academy of Florence.

Granacci's best pupil was Ridolfo Ghirlandajo, who was so sickly a child at his birth, that his parents despaired of rearing him, and believed his recovery was solely due to the wax candles and votive gifts which they offered at the shrine of the Madonna delle Carcere in Prato, where the boy was brought up. He was only eleven when his father died, but made rapid progress under Granacci's teaching, and gave promise of an excellence to which he never attained. His early works, three panels of Angels, in the Academy of Florence, and a Nativity, at St. Petersburg, passed under Granacci's name until quite lately, while a Coronation, of 1504, in the Louvre, closely resembles Fra Bartolommeo's style and colouring, and both the Procession to Calvary, in the National Gallery, and the Marriage of St. Katherine, at La Quiete, bear marks of Leonardo's influence.