Domenico Ghirlandaio

Florentine, 1449 - 1494

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Italian Renaissance painter from Florence (1448–1494)

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Shown from the chest up against a dark, teal-blue background, a light-skinned woman looks off to our left left in this vertical portrait painting. Her arms extend slightly in front of her, as if they rest on her knee. Her face turns almost in profile to our left as she gazes in that direction with hooded light brown eyes under curved brows. She has a sloping nose, a pointed chin, and her thin, light pink lips are closed. A white covering over her hair, which has been pulled back and up, is layered under a translucent ivory-white veil that covers her forehead and the sides of her face. A charcoal-gray stripe on the veil creates a line from her cheek to the back of her head. Her dress has a black bodice and sleeves, and the chest and the tops of her shoulders are covered with another veil. A patch of burgundy red shows through where the dress is laced up over the chest.
Domenico Ghirlandaio, Lucrezia Tornabuoni, c. 1475, tempera and oil on poplar panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1952.5.62

Lucrezia Tornabuoni

Domenico Ghirlandaio · c. 1475 · tempera and oil on poplar panel ·  Accession ID  1952.5.62

Against a gold background, a blond woman is shown from the lap up, facing us as she holds and looks down at a plump baby sitting on a gold and white pillow on her lap in this vertical painting. Both people have pale, peachy skin, and faint halos encircle their heads. The child sits with his body angled to our right, toward his mother, but he turns to look off to our left with pale green eyes. He holds his right hand, on our left, up with his thumb and first two fingers raised. He has short, light brown hair, rounded cheeks, a delicate nose and lips, and chubby legs. He wears a light blue smock edged in gold, with gold filigree at the collar. The garment is belted with a twist of fabric patterned in bands of red, black, and gold. Under the smock he wears a half-sleeved, transparent undershirt. The woman steadies the baby with her long, delicate hands. She wears a sky-blue robe edged with gold, Arabic-like script. The lining, in a black and brown floral pattern, is visible where the edges of her robe turn back over her wrists and around her neck. Belted across the chest in a twist of blue and gold fabric, her dusky-pink dress is lined at the neck with a gold band with red and blue gems, with a brooch of pearls and rock crystal at the center. Her headdress is a sheer, white cloth bordered with a gold stripe, rolled atop her head and falling to her shoulders, where it is tucked into her robe. Some areas of the gold background have worn away to show the red layer beneath.
Domenico Ghirlandaio, Madonna and Child, c. 1470/1475, tempera on panel transferred to hardboard, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.49

Madonna and Child

Domenico Ghirlandaio · c. 1470/1475 · tempera on panel transferred to hardboard ·  Accession ID  1961.9.49

Bibliography

1995

  • Kecks, Ronald. Ghirlandaio: Catalogo completo. Florence, 1995.

1998

  • Kecks, Ronald. Domenico Ghirlandaio. Florence, 1998.

2000

  • Cadogan, Jean. Domenico Ghirlandaio. Artist and Artisan. New Haven and London, 2000.

2003

  • Boskovits, Miklós, and David Alan Brown, et al. Italian Paintings of the Fifteenth Century. The Systematic Catalogue of the National Gallery of Art. Washington, D.C., 2003: 300.