Domenico Ghirlandaio

Domenico Ghirlandaio is a Florentine Renaissance painter, master frescoist whose monumental narrative work celebrates Medicean Florence at its peak and trains the young Michelangelo. Heir to the tradition of Masaccio and Fra Angelico, he perfects the art of fresco cycle in a synthesis of perspective rigor, realistic observation and decorative splendor. His frescoes for Santa Maria Novella and the Sassetti chapel at Santa Trinita transform biblical narratives into tableaus of contemporary Florentine life, where bourgeois, humanists and artists mingle with saints and prophets in a bold mixture of sacred and profane. Subtle portraitist, he immortalizes the intellectual and merchant elite of Florence with almost photographic precision that documents costumes, architecture and physiognomies of his time. His workshop, veritable academy where Michelangelo is trained, transmits Renaissance techniques and the humanist ideal that make Florence the artistic center of Europe in the Quattrocento.