preferred the real in landscape also. The background, seen through
the window, incorporates recognizable features of the Arno River
valley. Compared with the earlier Madonnas by Giotto (FIG. 19-8)
and Duccio (FIG. 19-10), this work shows how far artists had carried
the humanization of the religious theme. Whatever the ideals of
spiritual perfection may have meant to artists in past centuries, Re-
naissance artists realized those ideals in terms of the sensuous
beauty of this world.
DOMENICO GHIRLANDAIO Toward the end of the 15th
century,Domenico Ghirlandaio(1449–1494) received an impor-
tant commission from Giovanni Tornabuoni, one of the wealthiest
Florentines of his day. Tornabuoni asked Ghirlandaio to paint a cycle
of frescoes depicting scenes from the lives of the Virgin and Saint
John the Baptist for the choir of Santa Maria Novella, the Domini-
can church where Masaccio had earlier painted his revolutionary
Holy Trinity(FIG. 21-20). In Birth of the Virgin(FIG. 21-24), Mary’s
mother, Saint Anne, reclines in a palatial Renaissance room embell-
ished with fine wood inlay and sculpture, while midwives prepare
the infant’s bath. From the left comes a grave procession of women
led by a young Tornabuoni family member, probably Ludovica, Gio-
vanni’s daughter. Ghirlandaio’s composition epitomizes the achieve-
ments of 15th-century Florentine painting: clear spatial representa-
tion, statuesque figures, and rational order and logical relations
among all figures and objects. If anything of earlier artistic traits re-
mains here, it is the arrangement of the figures, who still cling some-
what rigidly to layers parallel to the picture plane. New, however, and
in striking contrast to the dignity and austerity of Fra Angelico’s
frescoes (FIG. 21-21) for the Dominican monastery of San Marco, is
the dominating presence of the donor’s family in the religious
tableau. Ludovica holds as prominent a place in the composition
(close to the central axis) as she must have held in Florentine society.
558 Chapter 21 ITALY,1400 TO 150021-24Domenico
Ghirlandaio,Birth
of the Virgin,Cappella
Maggiore, Santa Maria
Novella, Florence, Italy,
ca. 1485–1490. Fresco,
24 4 14 9 .
Ludovica Tornabuoni holds
as prominent a place in
Ghirlandaio’s fresco as she
must have held in Florentine
society—evidence of the
secularization of sacred
themes in 15th-century
Italian painting.
21-25Domenico Ghirlandaio,Giovanna Tornabuoni(?), 1488.
Oil and tempera on wood, 2 6 1 8 . Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza,
Madrid.
Renaissance artists revived the ancient art of portraiture. This portrait
reveals the great wealth, courtly manners, and humanistic interest in
classical literature that lie behind much 15th-century Florentine art.
1 in.
1 ft.