The influence of Alessio Baldovinetti is reflected in the pictures of Cosimo Rosselli (1437–1507). Nothing is officially ascribed to him in this collection, but the Annunciation, with St. John the Baptist, St. Anthony, St. Catherine, and St. Peter Martyr (No. 1656), which is here catalogued as by an Unknown fifteenth-century Florentine painter, is apparently his work. It is inscribed with the date a.d.m.cccclxxiii.
THE GOLDSMITH PAINTERS
During the generation which preceded the activity of Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449–1494) (who appears in the official Catalogue under the name of Grillandaio) the art of the painter had often been combined with that of the architect and sculptor. In time the influence of the goldsmith is seen in the inclination of the more prosaic painters, among whom Ghirlandaio holds an important place, to subordinate the pictorial qualities of their compositions to the gold-worker’s love of ornamental detail and fanciful jewellery. Paintings carried out in the goldsmith’s shop thus contained in the action of the figures, the treatment of the draperies, and the fanciful head-dresses, imitations of silver and bronze work. Domenico Bigordi owed the name of Ghirlandaio, by which he is now generally known, to his having been apprenticed to a goldsmith who acquired fame as a maker of the jewelled coronals (ghirlande) that became fashionable. This pupil of Alessio Baldovinetti, who was a craftsman quite as much as a painter, is to-day best known by the large number of frescoes he painted in Tuscany.
PLATE III.—DOMENICO GHIRLANDAIO
(1449–1494)
FLORENTINE SCHOOL
No. 1322.—PORTRAIT OF AN OLD MAN AND HIS GRANDSON
(“The Bottle-Nosed Man”)
(Portrait d’un Vieillard et de son petit-fils)
An old man, wearing a red robe edged with fur, looks down tenderly at his golden-haired little grandson who lifts up his face to be kissed. Through an open casement is seen a landscape.
Painted in tempera on panel.
2 ft. 0½ in. × 1 ft. 6¼ in. (0·62 × 0·46.)
In Ghirlandaio’s Visitation (No. 1321) the Virgin, her conventional robes fastened by a morse such as this goldsmith-painter repeatedly introduced into his pictures, stoops to greet St. Elizabeth. On the left is Mary Cleophas, and from the right Mary Salome trips lightly on to the scene. As always in a painting of this subject, the principal figures are silhouetted against the arch in the background, through which the sky is seen. Characteristic of Ghirlandaio’s paintings is the jewelled architecture which bears the date 1491, three years previous to his death. The Catalogue suggests that this large picture was finished by either Davide or Benedetto, the brothers and assistants of Domenico, but it is possible that his brother-in-law, Bastiano Mainardi, may have worked on it. The French, having pointed out to the Duke of Tuscany in 1815 that Florence possessed many better examples of this painter’s art, were allowed to retain this panel picture, which had been brought in 1806 from the Church of S. Maria Maddalena dei Pazzi at Florence.
The delightful Portrait of an Old Man and his Grandson (No. 1322, [Plate III.]), which is usually known as The Bottle-nosed Man, is an admirable study from life. The winsome attitude of the little boy and the refined expression of the old man are very pleasing. It is an incontrovertible, but perhaps not obvious, fact that mere physiological ugliness can in the hands of an accomplished artist be transformed into a medium of beauty. The picture has unfortunately been damaged, notably in the forehead of the principal figure. The certainty of touch and the delicacy of the modelling indicate that this panel belongs to the last period of the artist’s activity, when he also executed the magnificent Portrait of Giovanna degli Albizzi, now in the collection of Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan.