20 Facts About Domenico Ghirlandaio

Domenico di Tommaso Curradi di Doffo Bigordi, professionally known as Domenico Ghirlandaio, spelled as Ghirlandajo, was an Italian Renaissance painter born in Florence.

Many apprentices passed through Domenico Ghirlandaio's workshop, including the famous Michelangelo.

Domenico Ghirlandaio was the eldest of six children born to Tommaso Bigordi by his first wife Antonia di ser Paolo Paoli; of these, only Domenico and his brothers and collaborators Davide and Benedetto Ghirlandaio survived childhood.

Giorgio Vasari reported that Domenico Ghirlandaio was at first apprenticed to his father, who was a goldsmith.

Domenico Ghirlandaio was eventually apprenticed to Alesso Baldovinetti to study painting and mosaic.

Domenico Ghirlandaio maintained a close association with other Florentine painters including Botticelli and with the Umbrian painter Perugino.

Domenico Ghirlandaio excelled in the painting of frescos and it is for his fresco cycles that he is best known.

Domenico Ghirlandaio painted a life-sized Last Supper in its refectory.

Domenico Ghirlandaio is known to have created other works in Rome, now lost.

Between 1482 and 1485, Domenico Ghirlandaio painted a fresco cycle in the Sassetti Chapel of Santa Trinita for the banker Francesco Sassetti, the powerful director of the Medici bank, whose Rome branch was headed by Giovanni Tornabuoni, Domenico Ghirlandaio's future patron.

The aspect of the painting that had a profound effect on Domenico Ghirlandaio was the naturalism with which the shepherds were depicted.

Domenico Ghirlandaio painted the altarpiece of the Sassetti chapel, an Adoration of the Shepherds, in 1485.

Immediately after the commission for the Sassetti Chapel, Domenico Ghirlandaio was asked to renew the frescoes in the choir of the Santa Maria Novella, which formed the chapel of the Ricci family.

Domenico Ghirlandaio painted an altarpiece for Giovanni Tornabuoni to commemorate his first wife who had died in childbirth, as had Giovanni's mother.

Domenico Ghirlandaio painted a number of panel portraits of known identities, such as his profile portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni, commissioned in 1488.

Domenico Ghirlandaio produced designs for a number of mosaics including the Annunciation, on a portal of the Florence Cathedral.

Domenico Ghirlandaio had been married twice and left six children.

One of his three sons, Ridolfo Domenico Ghirlandaio, became a painter.

Domenico Ghirlandaio worked mainly in fresco, with a number of important works being executed in tempera.

Vasari states that Domenico Ghirlandaio was the first to abandon, in great part, the use of gilding in his pictures, representing by painting any objects that were made of gold.