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Domenico Ghirlandaio, Calling of the Apostles, 1481, fresco, 349 x 570 cm, Cappella Sistina, Vatican

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Domenico Ghirlandaio, Calling of the Apostles, 1481, fresco in the Cappella Sistina


   
   
In 1481–82 Domenico Ghirlandaio received an important commission in the Vatican for a fresco, representing the calling of Peter and Andrew to their Apostleship.[1] Although he is known to have created other works in Rome, they have been for centuries considered lost to history. He also produced frescoes, dated before 1485, for Cappella di Santa Fina, in the Tuscan Collegiata di San Gimignano which came under the rule of nearby Siena at the beginning of the 1350s.
The style of Calling of the Apostles is reminiscent of the frescoes by Masaccio of about 1427, which had been the great innovating works of the early 15th century in Florence but by then must have seemed somewhat old-fashioned. The principal feature of this fresco is the group of portraits of the Florentine colony in Rome, who are represented as witnesses of the biblical event.[2] It has been suggested that the inclusion of these Florentines in a fresco painted for the Vatican had political significance, because the Florentine government had recently accused Pope Sixtus IV of complicity in the conspiracy of the Pazzi, another powerful Tuscan banking family, to murder the leading members of the Florentine Medici family.

Ghirlandaio must have used his stay in Rome to study Roman antiquities at first hand, for many details of triumphal arches, ancient sarcophagi, and similar antique elements occur in his works throughout the rest of his career.

The fresco is from the cycle of the life of Christ in the Sistine Chapel, it is located in the third compartment on the north wall.
Vasari wrote: "...Domenico represented Christ calling Peter and Andrew from their nets, and the Resurrection of Christ, the greater part of which is now destroyed, for it was above the door..." Later, the Resurrection vanished completely in the destruction of the wall.

In the early 1480s Pope Sixtus IV brought a number of famous Tuscan and Umbrian artists to Rome in order to decorate his new court chapel, the Sistine Chapel. Ghirlandaio must already have made a name for himself with his commissions, primarily the frescoes for the Saint Fina Chapel, in order to be considered for a task of this importance. The chapel's ceiling would not be decorated with Michelangelo's famous frescoes until the reign of Sixtus' nephew, Julius II. Between 1481 and 1483, the walls of the chapel were covered with frescoes by Sandro Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Cosimo Rosselli, Piero di Cosimo and others - probably under the direction of Pietro Perugino.

On the left are scenes from the life of Moses, and on the right scenes from the life of Christ, a typological arrangement that sees Moses as the predecessor of Christ. This cycle of frescoes became one of the major artistic achievements of the Italian Quattrocento. In accordance with the Pope's wishes, in each picture several episodes of a story were presented together, a practice that by this time was already becoming outdated. The two frescoes Ghirlandaio painted were the Calling of Saint Peter and Resurrection. By Vasari's time the second fresco had been largely destroyed and an entirely new version was painted in the 16th century.

The surviving work is divided into two zones. In the foreground, on a shallow stage, Ghirlandaio depicted several groups of people, tightly packed together in rows. At the centre Christ is blessing the kneeling brothers Simon, Peter and Andrew, His first disciples. They follow Him and appear again in the background on the right. There they witness Christ calling James and John, who are sitting in a boat mending their nets with their father, Zebedee.

The massiveness of the heavy garments worn by the figures in the main scene in the centre foreground is reminiscent of Masaccio's frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel dating from about 1424 -1428. It is mainly Masaccio's
Tribute Money that matches this one in terms of colour, landscape, figure types.

 

   
   

It is at the sides of the picture field that Ghirlandaio dares to display his own developing style. The group of women on the left, including a woman in blue seen from behind, anticipates the female figures he paints in later works. In this fresco he also gives a free rein to the highly individual style of portraiture he had developed in the Vespucci and Saint Fina chapels.

 

Domenico Ghirlandaio, Calling of the Apostles (detail), 1481, fresco in the Cappella Sistina, Rome


On the right, arranged in an exactly level row like pearls on a string, are members of the most influential Florentine families who maintained residences in Rome. In the centre stands Giovanni Tornabuoni, representing the Medici family's merchant bank. He later became a sponsor of Ghirlandaio and was made the Pope's treasurer despite the enduring enmity between Pope Sixtus IV and the Medici.
His son Lorenzo Tornabuoni - in front of him, wearing a black garment - lived to see his wife die young and his family go bankrupt after his father's death. In 1477, Ghirlandaio painted two episodes from the life of Saint John the Baptist and two from the life of the Madonna for the mortuary chapel of Lorenzo's mother, Francesca Pitti Tornabuoni, in the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome. According to Vasari, these works were very famous at the time; unfortunately they no longer exist, though two charming portraits of Lorenzo's wife, Giovanna Tornabuoni, who died young, have survived.
To the right of Giovanni Tornabuoni stands the humanist John Argyropoulos, wearing a white beard. He wrote commentaries on Aristotle and fled to Florence from Constantinople when the city fell to the Turks in 1453. A friend of Cosimo de' Medici, he spent fifteen years as a court scholar and professor of Greek at the University of Florence, until he was summoned to Rome by the Pope. He nonetheless continued to see himself as a Florentine, as Lorenzo de' Medici had accorded him civil rights there.

The nobleman beside him, with white hair and no hat, is thought to be either Francesco Soderini from Florence, or Raimondo Orsini from Rome. The young man behind him, with the brightly shining face, is thought to be Antonio Vespucci. Separate from the other Florentines, behind Christ, stands Diotisalvi Neroni, an earlier friend of Cosimo de' Medici. He lived in a more or less willing exile in Rome, as he was involved in plots against Cosimo's son Piero.

 


Domenico Ghirlandaio, Calling of the Apostles, 1481, fresco in the Cappella Sistina, Rome
It was not only his skill in portraits but also his skill in landscapes, visible in the fresco in the Sistine Chapel, that made Ghirlandaio famous. The entire upper half of this work is devoted to an extensive landscape with a high horizon. The Sea of Galilee, hemmed in by hills and mountains, is snaking its way like a river into the background, where, in accordance with aerial perspective, the colours are paler and lighter. In the sky brightly coloured birds are swooping - birds derived from Benozzo Gozzoli's Procession of the Magi, painted between 1459 and 1461 for the Florence Medici palace, and also from works by Domenico Veneziano.
 
   


Virtual Visit of the Sistine Chapel | www.vatican.va

Art in Tuscany | Domenice Ghirlandaio, Last Supper frescoes


[1] Domenico Ghirlandaio, original name Domenico di Tommaso Bigordi (born 1449, Florence [Italy]—died Jan. 11, 1494, Florence), early Renaissance painter of the Florentine school noted for his detailed narrative frescoes, which include many portraits of leading citizens in contemporary dress.

Domenico Ghirlandaio was the son of a goldsmith, and his nickname, “Ghirlandaio,” was derived from his father’s skill in making garlands for the hair of Florentine women. Domenico probably began as an apprentice in his father’s shop, but almost nothing is known about his training as a painter or the beginnings of his career. The earliest works attributed to him, dating from the early 1470s, show strong influences from the frescoes of Andrea del Castagno, who died when Ghirlandaio was about eight years old. The Italian painter, architect, and biographer Giorgio Vasari recorded in his Lives (1550) that Ghirlandaio was a pupil of the Florentine painter Alesso Baldovinetti, even though Baldovinetti was only four or five years older than Ghirlandaio himself. Ghirlandaio preferred to work in fresco on large wall surfaces, but he used smaller-scale paintings executed on wood panels for the altarpieces of the chapels that housed his fresco cycles. He never experimented with oil painting, although most Florentine painters of his generation began to use it exclusively in the last quarter of the 15th century.

Domenico Ghirlandaio, original name Domenico di Tommaso Bigordi (born 1449, Florence [Italy]—died Jan. 11, 1494, Florence), early Renaissance painter of the Florentine school noted for his detailed narrative frescoes, which include many portraits of leading citizens in contemporary dress.

Domenico was the son of a goldsmith, and his nickname, “Ghirlandaio,” was derived from his father’s skill in making garlands for the hair of Florentine women. Domenico probably began as an apprentice in his father’s shop, but almost nothing is known about his training as a painter or the beginnings of his career. The earliest works attributed to him, dating from the early 1470s, show strong influences from the frescoes of Andrea del Castagno, who died when Ghirlandaio was about eight years old. The Italian painter, architect, and biographer Giorgio Vasari recorded in his Lives (1550) that Ghirlandaio was a pupil of the Florentine painter Alesso Baldovinetti, even though Baldovinetti was only four or five years older than Ghirlandaio himself. Ghirlandaio preferred to work in fresco on large wall surfaces, but he used smaller-scale paintings executed on wood panels for the altarpieces of the chapels that housed his fresco cycles. He never experimented with oil painting, although most Florentine painters of his generation began to use it exclusively in the last quarter of the 15th century.

In 1481–82 Ghirlandaio received an important commission in the Vatican for a fresco, representing the calling of the first Apostles, Peter and Andrew, in the Sistine Chapel. Its style is reminiscent of the frescoes by Masaccio of about 1427, which had been the great innovating works of the early 15th century in Florence. The principal feature of this fresco is the group of portraits of the Florentine colony in Rome, who are represented as witnesses of the biblical event. It has been suggested that the inclusion of these Florentines in a fresco painted for the Vatican had political significance, since the Florentine government had recently accused Pope Sixtus IV of complicity in the Pazzi conspiracy. The Pazzi, a powerful Tuscan banking family, had attempted to murder the leading members of the Florentine Medici family, Giuliano and Lorenzo de’Medici (1478). Giuliano had been killed in the attempt while Lorenzo escaped with few wounds.

Ghirlandaio must have used his stay in Rome to study Roman antiquities at first hand, for many details of triumphal arches, ancient sarcophagi, and similar antique elements occur in his works throughout the rest of his career. A sketchbook filled with drawings of such antiquities (now in El Escorial, near Madrid) seems to be the work of a member of his shop.
Late in his short life, Ghirlandaio and his assistants, including his brothers Davide and Benedetto and his brother-in-law Sebastiano Mainardi, produced two major fresco cycles. The earlier was executed for the Sassetti Chapel in Santa Trinita 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 Piazza della Signoria with the Loggia dei Lanzi—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, and of leading members of the Florentine mercantile aristocracy. 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 Portinari 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.

Ghirlandaio’s last and greatest fresco cycle was painted for another Medici banker, Giovanni Tornabuoni, and represents scenes from the life of the Virgin and of St. John the Baptist, the patron saint of Florence. Ghirlandaio signed the contract on Sept. 1, 1485, for these large frescoes on the walls of the choir of Santa Maria Novella in Florence. Ghirlandaio and his assistants, among whom was probably the young Michelangelo, completed the frescoes by about 1490. The front panel of the altarpiece was completed by assistants according to Ghirlandaio’s design soon after his death in 1494. Even more than in the Sassetti Chapel, these narrative scenes contain a wealth of detail showing patrician interiors and contemporary dress; as a result they are one of the most important sources for current knowledge of the furnishings of a late 15th-century Florentine palace.
The frescoes in Santa Maria Novella are overcrowded with detail, so that the compositions fail to make their full impact. Some of Ghirlandaio’s smaller panel paintings, particularly the portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni (1488), have a simplicity that makes them far more striking than the frescoes of Santa Maria Novella. The portrait representing an old man with his grandchild (c. 1480–90) is perhaps Ghirlandaio’s finest painting, notable for its tenderness and humanity, as well as a simplicity and directness of handling.
Ghirlandaio was considered by his contemporaries to be one of the best painters of his generation. In the 19th century, however, the degree of realism in his work was decried by critics, who appreciated him only for his decorative qualities. His work has been reevaluated since the 1960s, and he is now regarded as one of the most eloquent and elegant narrators of Florentine society at the end of the 15th century.

Ghirlandaio’s son, Ridolfo, was also a noted painter and a friend of Vasari. Among his best-known works are a pair representing scenes from the life of St. Zenobius (1517).
[From Domenico Ghirlandaio (Italian painter) -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia]

[2] Alberti mentions in On Painting the early fifteenth-century custom of introducing portraits of well-known and worthy citizens in religious narratives. This tradition continues in the family patronage of public religious commissions of the late fifteenth century. It also gives scope for female portraits to be included in a very important genre, that of collective civic portraiture. Perhaps the best example of a religious commission which stresses the significance of public display in such a context, while at the same time illustrating the difference of men's and women's ideal roles and behaviour in late fifteenth-century Florentine society, is provided by [a] series for frescoes by Ghirlandaio and his workshop. The decoration of the apse (cappella maggiore) of the Dominican church /p. 65: of Santa Maria Novella in Florence, commissioned by Giovanni Tornabuoni in 1485, was carried out between 1486 and 1490. This was the largest fresco commission in Florence in the last decades of the fifteenth century, for one of the most important churches of the city.
Giovanni Tornabuoni was one of the wealthiest and most influential men in Florence, tied to the Medici by links forged by marriage, business and political interests. His sister Lucrezia was the wife of Piero de Medici and the mother of Lorenzo the Magnificent. In the same year as his sister's marriage, 1444, Giovanni had first entered the Medici bank. In 1465 he became the director and partner of the Medici bank in Rome, and eventually treasurer and financial adviser to Pope Sixtus IV...

This page uses material from the Wikipedia article Domenico Ghirlandaio and Sistine Chapel, published under the GNU Free Documentation License.
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