Early years Ghirlandaio was born Domenico di Tommaso di Currado di Doffo Bigordi. He 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. Tommaso had two more children by his second wife, also named Antonia, whom he married in 1464. Domenico's half-sister Alessandra (b. 1475) married the painter
Bastiano Mainardi in 1494. Both Ghirlandaio's father and his uncle, Antonio, were
setaiuolo a minuto (dealers of silks and related objects in small quantities).
Giorgio Vasari reported that Domenico was at first apprenticed to his father, who was a
goldsmith. The nickname "Il Ghirlandaio" (garland-maker) came to Domenico from his father, who was famed for creating the metallic
garland-like headdresses worn by Florentine women. According to Vasari, Domenico made portraits of the passers-by and visitors to the shop: "when he painted the country people or anyone who passed through his studio he immediately captured their likeness". He maintained a close association with other Florentine painters including
Botticelli and with the
Umbrian painter
Perugino. In 1480, Ghirlandaio painted
St. Jerome in His Study as a companion piece to
Botticelli's
Saint Augustine in His Study in the
Church of Ognissanti, Florence. He also painted a life-sized
Last Supper in its refectory. From 1481 to 1485, he was employed on frescoes at the
Palazzo Vecchio, painting among other works an
Apotheosis of St. Zenobius (1482) in the
Sala del Giglio, an over-life-sized work with an elaborate architectural framework, figures of Roman heroes, and other secular details, striking in its perspective and compositional skill. Ghirlandaio painted the
Vocation of the Apostles. He also painted the now lost
Resurrection of Christ.
The Crossing of the Red Sea has also been attributed to him, but is consistent with the style of
Cosimo Roselli who was also part of the commission. Ghirlandaio is known to have created other works in Rome, now lost. His future brother-in-law, Sebastiano Mainardi, assisted him with these commissions and in the early frescoes at San Gimignano where Mainardi is now thought to have painted an
Annunciation sometimes attributed to Ghirlandaio. In 1484, an agent of
Ludovico il Moro wrote to his lord, describing the works of artists whose works he had seen in Florence: "Domenico Ghirlandaio [is] a good painter on panel and better in mural fresco; his style is very good; he is active and very creative."
Later works in Tuscany , with portraits of
Lorenzo de' Medici and his family occupying prominent positions as spectators to the event Between 1482 and 1485, 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, Ghirlandaio's future patron. The cycle was of six scenes from the life of
Saint Francis of Assisi, including
Saint Francis obtaining from Pope Honorius the Approval of the Rules of His Order, the saint's
Death and Obsequies and a
Resuscitation of a child of the Spini family, who had died as a result of a fall from a window. Immediately after the commission for the Sassetti Chapel, Ghirlandaio was asked to renew the frescoes in the choir of the
Santa Maria Novella, which formed the chapel of the Ricci family. The Tornabuoni and Tornaquinci families, who were much more prominent than the Ricci, undertook the cost of the restoration, with certain contractual conditions. The
Tornabuoni Chapel frescoes were painted in four courses around the three walls between 1485 and 1490, the subjects being the lives of the
Virgin Mary and
St. John the Baptist. The day and month of his birth remain undocumented, but he is recorded as having died in early January of his forty-fifth year. He had been married twice and left six children. One of his three sons,
Ridolfo Ghirlandaio, also became a painter. Although he had a long line of descendants, the family name died out in the seventeenth century, when its last members entered monasteries. ==Critical assessment and legacy==