artmirc-Cufarul cu Diamante...-GHIRLANDAIO, Domenico [1448 +1494] ITALIAN PAINTER-P.3_2016

artmirc-Cufarul cu Diamante...-GHIRLANDAIO, Domenico [1448 +1494] ITALIAN PAINTER-P.3_2016_ GHIRLANDAIO, Domenico(b. 1449, Firenze, +d. 1494, Firenze), Italian Painter, Florentine School, The Village Church of Cercina, near Florence, has a Fresco of three Saints, now thought to be Ghirlandaio's earliest work, but there is general agreement that some frescoes in the Church of Ognissanti in FLORENCE, almost certainly dating from around 1472-73, show his style at its earliest developed stage. One of them represents the Pietŕ and depicts Several Members of the Vespucci family as mourners, thus already introducing Ghirlandaio's characteristic combination of portrait figures in contemporary dress with a specifically religious subject. Something of the passion for minute detail shown by the early Flemish painters can be found in Ghirlandaio's work at this period; his fresco "St. Jerome in His Study," also in Ognissanti and dated 1480, may even be an enlarged version in fresco of an oil painting by the Flemish painter Jan van EYCK, which had found its way to Florence. The St. Jerome fresco is particularly important because it is a companion piece to one of St Augustine by Ghirlandaio's Florentine contemporary Sandro BOTTICELLI; the difference between the two Frescoes reveals Ghirlandaio's rather pedestrian and anecdotal style. Late in his short life, Ghirlandaio and his assistants, including his Brothers Davide and Benedetto and his brother-in-law Bastiano Mainardi, produced two major fresco cycles. The Earlier, a Series of Frescoes and an Altarpiece painted in Tempera, was executed for the "Sassetti Chapel in Santa Triniti in FLORENCE". Commissioned by Francesco Sassetti, an agent of the MEDICI Bank, they were painted between about 1482 and 1485. The Six main Frescoes represent Scenes from the Life of St. Francis of Assisi, Sassetti's Patron Saint. Once more, the frescoes contain many details of the buildings and customs of the period - for example, the original front of the church of Santa Trinitŕ itself - and, in particular, there are Numerous Portraits of Members of the Sassetti Family shown together with some of the leading members of the Medici Family, what may appear to have been a closer intimacy than was actually the case. The Altarpiece, dated 1485, contains further evidence of Ghirlandaio's interest in classical Antiquity, for it shows the Adoration of the Shepherds with a Roman triumphal arch in the background and a Roman sarcophagus in place of the traditional manger. This painting in tempera has several direct references to contemporary Flemish paintings, especially the enormous altarpiece painted in oil by Hugo van der Goes, which had been commissioned in Flanders by Tommaso Portinari, another agent of the Medici Bank, and which arrived in Florence in the late 1470s.