Ghirlandaio

Contents

Preface,

List of Illustrations, i. THE GHIRLANDAIO FAMILY, ....

ii. EARLY INFLUENCES, ...

Preface

IN putting forth this book, which is, I believe, the first separate monograph in English on the work of this artist, I make no apology for the attempt, however much may be needed for the imperfection of the achievement. Ghirlandaio is one who can be known in his full strength only to those who are familiar with the great frescoes which he has left upon the walls of Rome and Florence. The few genuine easel pictures from his hand which have reached the Museums of the North do not represent him at his best. It is with the view of making it easier for the English reader to set this painter, so essentially Florentine, in his true place in the history of the art of his country that I have endeavoured to summarise the leading features of the Life and Work of Domenico Ghirlandaio. A mere glance at the length of the book will show the reader that I do not pretend to have written an exhaustive treatise.

My thanks are due to Dr. J. H. W. Laing, the editor of this series, for his invaluable aid in looking over the proofs : to Mr. George Salting and to Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan for permitting the reproduction of their pictures: to the authorities of Sta. Maria Novella for their kindness in allowing me access to the frescoes, and to many others who, by various courtesies, have helped me in my task.

GERALD S. DAVIES

GoDAUVHNG. 1908

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Frontispiece — Giovanna degli Albizzi. Collection of Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan.

FACING PAGE

Sta. Maria r. Tommaso and Domenico (detail of fresco),

Novella, Florence, .....

ii. Madonna Enthroned (A. Baldovinetti). Ufflzi, Florence (No. in. Madonna with Saints. S. Andrea in Brozzi, near Florence, iv. Madonna with Vespucci Family. Ognissanti, Florence, v. Members of Vespucci Family. Ognissanti, Florence, . vi. The Vision of Sta. Fina. Collegiata of San Gimignano, vii. The Funeral of Sta. Fina. Collegiata of San Gimignano, viii. Head of Sta. Fina (detail of fresco). Collegiata of San Gimignano, ....

ix. St. Jerome (fresco). Ognissanti, Church,

x. The Last Supper (' Cenacolo'), 1480. Ognisssanti, Refectory,

xi. The Last Supper ('Cenacolo'). S. Marco, Florence, Small

Refectory, ......

xn. The Call of the First Apostles. Sistine Chapel, Rome, xiii. The Call of the First Apostles (detail of fresco). Sistine Chapel, Rome, ....

xiv. Pope Victor. Sistine Chapel, Rome, . xv. Madonna Enthroned. Uffizi, Florence (No. 1297), xvi. Madonna Enthroned. Accademia, Florence (No. 66). xvii. Madonna Enthroned. San Martina, Lucca, . xviii. St. Francis Renounces his Possessions. Sta. Trinita, Florence,

XX.

XXI.

XXII.

xxiii.

XXV.

XXVI.

XXVII.

XXIX.

XXX.

XXXIII.

XXXIV.

XXXV.

XXXVI.

XXXVII.

XXXVIII.

XXXIX.

XL.

XLI.

Honorius in. Grants the Charter to St. Francis. Sta. Trhiitn Florence, ......

Group with Lorenzo dei Medici. Sta. Trinita, Florence, The Healing of the Spini Child. Sta. Trinita, Florence, The Funeral of St. Francis. Sta. Trinita, Florence, . The Funeral of St. Francis (Benedetto da Maiano). Sta. Croce, Florence, ...... L

The Adoration of the Shepherds, 1485. Accademia, Florence (No. 195), . .

The Adoration of the Magi, 1487. Uffizi, Florence (No. 1295), The Adoration of the Magi, 1488. Innocenti Hospital, Florence Costanza dei Medici. National Gallery (Lent by Mr. George

The Expulsion of Joachim from the Temple. Sta. Maria

Novella, Florence, .....

The Birth of the Virgin Mary. Sta. Maria Novella, Florence Group from The Birth of the Virgin Mary (detail of fresco)

Sta. Maria Novella, Florence, The Presentation of the Virgin Mary. Sta. Maria Novella

Florence, .......

The Marriage of the Virgin Mary. Sta. Maria Novella.

Florence, ......

The Salutation of St. Elizabeth. Sta. Maria Novella, Florence, Giovanna degli Albizzi (detail of fresco). Sta. Maria Novella

Florence, ......

Zacharias and the Angel. Sta. Maria Novella, Florence, Zacharias Names his Son John. Sta. Maria Novella, Florence Medici Figures (detail of fresco). Sta. Maria Novella, Florence The Birth of St. John Baptist. Sta. Maria Novella, Florence A Florentine Lady (detail of fresco). Sta. Maria Novella.

Florence, .......

The Baptism of Our Lord. Sta. Maria Novella, Florence, The Madonna in Glory with Saints. Munich (No. 1011) X

PACING paok

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

I'ACIXO FADE xlii. The Salutation of St. Elizabeth. Louvre (No. 1321), . 129

xliii. The Translation of the Relics of S. Zanobius (Ridolfo). Uffizi, xliv. Portrait of a Lady Unknown (Ridolfo). Pitti, Florence, xlv. Portrait of a Jeweller (Ridolfo). Pitti, Florence (No. 207), . 139

xlvi. Sketch for the Birth of the Virgin. British Museum, . 141

xlvii. Pen and Ink Study. British Museum, . . .142

xlviii. Study of Drapery for the Salutation. Uffizi, Florence, . 143

xlix. Study in Silver Point. British Museum, . . .144

Chapter I The Ghirlandaio Family

DOMENICO di Tommaso di Currado di Doffo Bigordi1 was, as this full title explains, the son of Tommaso Bigordi, a goldsmith, known as del Ghirlandaio, either because he himself had earned a name as a maker of the gold and silver garlands with which the girls of Florence decked their hah-, or because his fathers before him, Currado and Doffo, had done so. Vasari, indeed, says that Tommaso had been the first to fashion such ornaments, but he had surely forgotten the pictures of earlier masters which display them, and the occasional sumptuary laws of Florence which forbade them. The word Ghirlandaio can stand for little more than orafo, goldsmith. In the year 1480 Tommaso in his income tax return (denunzia dei herd) describes himself, however, not as 'orafo'' but as ' sensale' or broker. There is no reason that he should not have combined the professions, especially as we find the young Domenico at once apprenticed to the art which was hereditary in the family. Possibly, however, by the year 1480, when Domenico as well as his brothers had adopted the art of the painter, the father, deprived of the help of

1 Domenico himself wrote his family name Bighordi, and so inscribed it in the fresco in Sta. Maria Novella of the ' Birth of the Virgin.' In the same fresco also is found the form Grillandai (i.e. the brothers del Grillaudaio), and this is how it appears in many documents. 1 have, however, thought it best to employ throughout this book the usual spelling of the name.

three sons, had abandoned his goldsmith's bottega and taken to another trade.

The same denunzia gives us the birth-dates of his sons. Domenico, born in 1449; David, 1454; Benedetto, 1458; these being all sons of his first wife, Costanza Nucci, who died in 1462 when Domenico was thirteen. A daughter, Alessandra, by the second wife, married the painter Bastiano Mainardi, of whom we shall have much to say in these pages.

The list of great sculptors and painters who received their first training as goldsmiths, or who combined these arts, is so striking, and has so much to tell us of the spirit which lay at the root of Italian art in the fifteenth century, that one may with advantage quote a few of the most important names, such as Orcagna, Luca della Robbia, Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Verrocchio, Pollaiuolo, Botticelli, Francia, Andrea del Sarto, Cristoforo Romano, Benvenuto Cellini. The truth which we learn from these instances, and from many others, in which men passed with perfect ease from the practice of one art or craft to the practice of another, is that whether a man was destined to be painter or sculptor, architect or engineer, goldsmith, intarsiatore, wood carver, glass painter, mosaicist, or even an embroiderer of ladies' dresses, he received up to the point at which his way diverged into the special technique of his craft, and even after that, in each case the same training. The foundation for one and all of these arts was thorough drawing, especially of the human figure. If the young apprentice obtained some mastery in that, the door lay open to him which led to success in any art or craft to which his special taste might lead him. And this first training was as a rule given to him not through the medium of any art schools, technical schools, or the like, which indeed had no existence,1 but in the actual bottega or workshop of some practical painter or sculptor. In other words,

1 The well-known school of Bertoldo, under the Medici protection, in the gardens of S. Marco, seems to be a contradiction of my statement, but it is evident that even in that case selection was made from the most promising young artists in the botteghe of Florence, as in the case of Michelangelo and Granacci.

THE GHIRLANDAIO FAMILY

the artists of Italy learnt their craft not in a school but in a workshop. And this training, with its wholesome thoroughness, its inspiring realities, and its freedom from the dilettante element, so far from producing narrow specialists or men of one art, seems to have had exactly the other result. We learn from Vasari that when Filippo Brunelleschi was sworn in to the Guild of the Goldsmiths he was at once placed, not in any school, for they had none, but under a master craftsman to learn his art, and from this workshop he goes out furnished with the training which made him at once goldsmith, sculptor, architect.

Of Tommaso's work as a goldsmith we have no surviving instance. Vasari quotes as examples of his skill only certain silver vessels and lamps which he made for the church of the Annunziata in Florence, but which disappeared during the siege of Florence in 1529, and he attributes Tommaso's popularity as a goldsmith mainly to his garlands. These details of Vasari are, as we have seen, somewhat shadowy. What is clear is that his eldest son, Domenico, received his early training in his father's workshop, and presently preferring the art of painting, was placed under Alesso Baldovinetti, who lived outside the Faenza gate, and had perhaps a higher reputation in his own day in his own city than he has since maintained. We are not able to say who were the companions of Domenico in Alesso's workshop.

Here, then, Domenico del Ghirlandaio parts company with the special practice of the art which had given to his family the name which he was to make famous by another art. So far as we know, he never again stepped aside from the practice of painting to put his hand to brooch or garland. The life that was to end so earlyhe died at forty-four — was too crowded with other achievement to leave time for any return to the craft of his boyhood. But the goldsmith's training was with him to the end, shining out through all his works, first and foremost in the love of clear and definite form, enclosed by outline rather than surrounded by atmosphere, and by his precise and accurate drawing of detail, but perhaps more visibly in the carefully wrought ornament of his architectural canopies and pilasters, which might almost be the work of a niello worker written very large — too much so, indeed, in some cases. But most of all one sees the record of his first love, as one does also to a less extent, in those other goldsmiths, Botticelli and Verrocchio, in the manifest delight with which he handles the jewelled braveries, the gold brocades of his stately Florentine maidens, the pearls, the topaz, the carbuncles which glitter at the breast or mitre of his saints and bishops. One may allow oneself the pleasant fancy that some of these are records of the workshop triumphs of the old Grillandaio firm. One brooch in particular, a large oval set with great pearls about a single carbuncle, occurs with slight variations so often that one is tempted to think that it may have been some well-known masterpiece of Tommaso's skill, recorded with loving pride by the son. It is reserved, I think, by Domenico for his Madonnas.1

Alesso Baldovinetti,2 to whom the young ex-goldsmith was now entrusted, was a painter certainly not of the first interest, but as certainly worthy of a place among the second rank of fifteenth-century Florentines. He belonged to a rich merchant family, and had abandoned commerce for painting. Vasari indeed leads us to think that he worked a good deal at his ease, being prosperous enough to follow his own bent. But Vasari is careful to add that he was most patient and hard-working, that he drew very well, had a special talent for the close imitation of natural objects, and was fond of dangerous experiments with oils and varnishes. Perhaps to the latter propensity is due the disappearance of so many of the wall paintings which Vasari mentions. A chapel in Sta. Trinita (destroyed about 1760) is specially named as an instance in which Baldovinetti had mixed his colours with

1 It will be found in the ' Visitation,' No. 1321, Louvre ; the ' Madonna Enthroned,' 66, Accademia, Florence ; the same subject in the Uffizi, 1297 (where the large jewel is blue).

2 It is believed by some critics that Verrocchio learnt the technics of painting under Baldovinetti. See Verrocchio. Maud Cruttwell : London, 1904.

M \Ip<»NNA K\ ] llki'M- n

THE GHIRLANDAIO FAMILY

yolk of egg and boiled varnish, believing that the frescoes would thereby be preserved from damp. But the results were disastrous, and it is interesting to remember that his pupil, Domenico Ghirlandaio, who afterwards was to paint the Sassetti frescoes in the church in which Baldovinetti's work was dropping from the wall, resolutely adhered from first to last to the old traditional methods of fresco and tempera, refusing all the new and tempting mixtures which offered richness and depth of colour, but had as yet no proved permanence. It indicates the sound sense which marked the man in his whole career that he should have trusted his own judgment and taken his own line in this matter from the first. He had doubtless seen the wonderful concoctions of the Baldovinetti workshop, and had noted their results, resolving that what had been good enough for Giotto and Masaccio should be good enough for him. He was ready to learn from Baldovinetti's experience — young folk do not always accept second-hand experience— what he had better avoid. And it is to this avoidance of dangerous methods, and to the direct simplicity of his handling that we owe the preservation of his works, which in their life of over four hundred years have suffered less than most which were painted in his day.

We are, however, not without surviving evidence of Baldovinetti's handiwork. In the Uffizi (No. 60) is a ' Madonna Enthroned' (Plate n.), with six saints at her side, and St. Dominic and St. Francis kneeling in front — perhaps the ' tavola maggiore'' painted for the Trinita Chapel in tempera without the patent mixture, but nevertheless much repainted. The two kneeling monks are made much smaller than the Virgin, the St. John, or the other saints. They are to be thought of as living men at the time of their so kneeling, and so by the old tradition must be made smaller than the glorified saints above. The picture is indeed that of a sound painter enough (when he tried no experiments), one who saw no visions, had no strong individual aim, loved bright colours and pretty patterns, and was fond of flowers and animals. The trees thrown against the sky above the line of the canopy, especially the orange trees, are good, and are the work of a man that loved them. There is, too, a richly painted carpet, which appears again in his San Miniato fresco. The Virgin, placid and somewhat colourless, follows a little the type of Filippo Lippi, but lacks his charm. One sees, indeed, little in the true essentials of the picture which acted strongly as an influence on Domenico. The love of rich apparel, of trees against a sky, of flowers and birds, may have had their effect in encouraging Domenico in the same direction, and pictures of the scholar do certainly show delight in these details, but for the true inspiration which was to make Domenico's art what it was in other respects we can hardly look to his master.

What has been said of this picture applies again to the frescoes in San Miniato in the chapel which contains Antonio Rossellino's beautiful monument to the Cardinal of Portugal, Giacomo di Lusitania. It was formerly believed that Antonio del Pollaiuolo had had a share in these frescoes, but documents found in late years have proved that Baldovinetti executed them alone. The ' Annunciation,' on the wall opposite to the tomb, in many parts a wreck, in others much repainted, was gorgeous once — the Virgin in blue and cloth of gold, her feet in gold-embroidered slippers resting on a rich Oriental carpet, the Announcing Angel in gold brocade with peacock's wings. This angel, indeed, has some suggestion of the type which Domenico, and Mainardi working with him, used in this same subject afterwards. Something of a memory of this Virgin may perhaps be found in Domenico's early work at Brozzi. For the present all that one need say of the San Miniato fresco is that it is the work of a man who was more likely to teach the value of rich pattern and gorgeous detail than to inspire a painter of Madonnas.

The third existing work of Baldovinetti is a fresco in the portico of the Annunziata at Florence, on the left of the main door. The subject is the ' Nativity,' and even in Lanzi's day the fresco was

THE GHIRLANDAIO FAMILY

so ruined that the design only remained, the colour having passed away. The green flowered robe of the Virgin has indeed been restored to perish once again. Baldovinetti has been employing one of his processes, and the fresco would not be worth quoting but for the fact that the surviving design shows a certain strength in Baldovinetti's art which is not revealed to us in his other works.1 We may pass over the obvious defects — the emptiness of the composition, the lack of cohesion, the isolation of the figure of the kneeling Virgin from the adoring shepherds, the childish spottiness of the landscape (in which Valdarno towards Lucca seems to be shown), and turn to the finely drawn ivy which climbs the ruined wall, and to the leafage against the sky above. This is given with a naturalism which seems to have been born out of its century, and when we take it in conjunction with the admirable drawing of the donkey, which somehow escaped the notice of Vasari, though he saw the snake upon the wall, we seem to see in Baldovinetti a man who, if he had been born in a later age, when men might devote themselves to the painting of beast, or flower, or anything else for its own sake without the necessary presence of the Madonna and the saints, would have been amongst the first of animaliers. Here certainly, in this love of animals, it is only fair to set down to Baldovinetti's account the same characteristic which reappears in the work of his greater pupil. And though the ruined state of the fresco makes it almost impossible to speak with any safety on such a point as the atmospheric effect of a picture, depending as it must on subtle gradations of tone which time and decay not only obliterate but also often simulate, yet there does seem to belong to this landscape, in spite of the stiffness of its detail, a certain atmospheric breadth which may have been not without its share in turning Domenico Ghirlandaio's studies in the same direction. It remains only to say to the honour of Baldovinetti that,

1 Baldovinetti is believed — there is no evidence, except style perhaps, and kindred tastes certainly — to have been a pupil of Paolo Uccelli. He was born in 1427, and would therefore have been nineteen when Paolo was painting in the Chiostro Verde of Sta. Maria Xovella.

like Ghhiandaio himself, he was ready to put into his painting more work than he was paid for. A document exists which shows that his Sta. Trinita frescoes were to be paid for after five years of work at 200 gold florins. This work was estimated by a commission of four such painters as Cosimo Rosselli, Benozzo Gozzoli, Pietro Perugino, and Filippino Lippi at 1000 gold florins — a double testimony to Baldovinetti as a man and as an artist.

It has been necessary to say thus much of the man in whose bottega Domenico learnt the painter's craft, and saw the example of an artist of high character, though not of quite the highest achievement. And as we pass on we shall, at any rate in the earliest work of the young painter, be able to speak of possible memories of these years spent with Baldovinetti outside the Porta Faenza. But it is not, as I have already said, from this source that the true inspirations of Domenico's art were to come, so much as from the other influences which in that age were the birthright of every artist born within the sound of the Campanile bell, and baptized in the font of San Giovanni. From Baldovinetti Domenico could learn the technics of his craft, could learn also from the spirit of the honourable old craftsman lessons, to an artist, still better worth learning, but beyond this we may hardly go. At this point, therefore, it will be well to pause and look round Florence of that day to see what influences there were in the work that had been done and was being done within her Avails that might shape the aims and give direction to the art of such a one as Ghirlandaio.

Chapter II

FOR convenience sake let us make arbitrary choice of the year 1466, at which time Domenico Ghirlandaio was seventeen, to commence our survey. If the reader will mentally remove from Florence all that has been added to it since that year, of building, picture, statue, he will be surprised to find how large a proportion of that which is best in her art was already complete, and how great the store of treasure which she already contained. It is true that we should feel the loss of much which was presently to be created by those whose day was not yet come — by Botticelli and Perugino, by Lionardo, by Andrea del Sarto, Raphael, Michelangelo ; but we should still have a city rich in the best art beyond any other city in the world. The Duorao had already received the best of what it now contains, and little, save the ' Pieta ' of Michelangelo, was absent which might not be spared. Giotto's Tower, The Baptistry, Or San Michele, were practically in the very guise in which we see them now. In San Marco, Fra Angelico's paintings were still fresh upon the walls : Santa Croce, with the frescoes of Giotto and his school, was almost as we see it now ; hardly a painting or a monument of the highest worth has been added to it since. In Santa Maria Novella the same is true. The Green Cloister, the Spanish Chapel, Orcagna's ' Paradise,' Masaccio's ' Annunciation ' were for the eyes of Ghirlandaio as for ours, but nearly forty years were to pass before Filippino Lippi would have added the frescoes of the Strozzi Chapel, while in the Choir itself, where Ghirlandaio's

GIIIRLAJNTDAIO

own fame was presently to be won, Orcagna's series of the lives of St. Mary and St. John were already far advanced in decay from the dampness of the walls. In St. Ambrogio, Cosimo Rosselli had already painted his fresco of the ' Miracle of the Sacrament,' a work undervalued in our own day, but with portrait groups of masterly quality, and of that intimate Florentine interest which was presently to become the hall-mark of Ghirlandaio's own art. On the walls of the convent-refectory of St. Apollonia might be seen Andrea del Castagno's great ' Cenacolo,' and in the Brancacci Chapel of the Carmine the frescoes of Masaccio and Masolino — Filippino's were not added till 1484 — had for many years been the accepted guide and model of the younger generation of Florentine artists. This list, it must be remembered, takes account of only a few of the principal churches and of a very few of the chief works within those churches. It leaves out of the reckoning that vast number of frescoes with which the walls and vaults were in that day still covered, though time and decay have long since taken them from us. It takes no account of the still larger sum of altar-pieces and easel-pictures which peopled the churches small and great, visible then in the places for which their painters had designed them, and in their own sympathetic surroundings, before the evil days had come upon them in which they were to be swept in monotonous herds into the prison-house of some museum or gallery.

Here were influences enough for a young artist to choose from, if indeed the true influences were ever a matter of conscious choice and not rather of unconscious reception. For conscious choice of an influence in a young artist is often only another expression for Imitation, which ends where it begins, and must be thrown aside before the man can find himself and possess his own soul. And though no young artist, even the greatest, ever began his life's work without some necessary and inevitable degree of imitation of the work of other men, some modelling of himself upon that which he admires in others — a form of hero-worship 10 no more to be cast aside and no more to be reproved in Art than in any other of Life's high errands — yet in the greatest artists the signs of this imitation are very soon lost sight of and absorbed as the artist rises to his proper self. They do indeed reappear in measurable quantity at times in later work, just as in the grown man the tastes and preferences of the boy will reappear, but rather to the gain than to the loss of true and healthy personality. They no more interfere with the true personality and no more offend as mannerisms in the artist than the voice and the handwriting of a son reproducing the voice and hand of a father mar that personality, or offend us when we are reminded by it of some one that has gone before.

And though, frankly, we may not claim for Domenico Ghirlandaio that he was, in the accepted sense of the words, one of the most original, or of the most deep-sighted, or possessed of the highest forms of imagination amongst Italian artists, yet we may claim for him — and the student of his work will find himself persuaded of the claim — that his period of direct imitation of any master then dead or then living was very short, and its traces less obvious than in most men, and that in the short life that was to be granted to him he became himself earlier and was possessed of his own soul, clear in his own aims, and sure of his own preferences, sooner than ever happens to the mere follower of other men, sooner than would perhaps have happened to Domenico himself if Baldovinetti had been of the calibre to stamp more strongly on the pupil the impress of his own art.

Amongst those, then, who as past masters seem to have most influenced him through their visible works, leaving aside Baldovinetti, of whom we have already spoken, no single man seems to have had more power of inspiring him than Masaecio, who by the largeness, breadth, and dignity of his conceptions and of his handling might well stir the depths of the eager young mind, that was afterwards to express its longing ' to be allowed to fresco all the walls of Florence.' Masaecio indeed influenced many another besides Domenico ; it may be said that no Florentine who followed him in the fifteenth century escaped his influence. There is no single man whose effect upon the art of his century is quite comparable to his. He brought under his spell, especially by the frescoes of the Carmine, men of widely different temperaments and different capacities, narrowing possibly the course of Florentine Art into fewer developments, but within those limits inspiring them, each after his individual preference, to the highest achievement. For it is of all true influence to inspire rather than to make patterns. And so the influence of Masaccio sends Ghirlandaio along the path that leads to the frescoes of Sta. Maria Novella, while for Michelangelo the path leads to the vault of the Sistine. But it follows from what has been said that we must not look in Ghirlandaio's work so much for minute resemblances of drapery and pose, or even type of figure, as for the general spirit which informs the work. And as we stand before the fresco of the ' Calling of the First Apostles ' in the Sistine Chapel, we are reminded irresistibly of Masaccio's ' Tribute Money ' in the Carmine. The resemblance stops far short of any identity between this figure or that, between this pose or that — far short, for instance, of the direct adaptations which Raphael did not fear to use ; but it lies in the less tangible, but not less convincing, presence of a similar aim in both, a something which makes one say, ' This man had seen and had admired Masaccio's masterpiece.'

I would direct attention also to the wonderful landscape of the ' Tribute Money,' the first true attempt in Italian Art to realise the breadth and atmospheric largeness of hill scenery. The landscape of Ghirlandaio, falling short indeed of Masaccio's greatness, and relapsing often into old conventions and impossible unobservant mannerisms of rock form and atmospheric value, is yet much larger in its grasp of landscape truth and in general breadth of feeling than that of many of his contemporaries, and is far more the outcome of his days spent 12 in the Carmine Chapel than of his days in the workshop of Baldovinetti.