Ghirlandajo. DOMENICO CURRADI, nicknamed Il Ghirlandajo ('the garland-maker'), Italian painter of the early Florentine school, was born in 1449 at Florence. As a youth he was apprenticed to a goldsmith, probably his father, the maker of metal garlands; and it was not until his thirty-first year that he became known as a painter. He painted principally frescoes, and in his native city. The church of Ognisanti there contains from his hand a St Jerome and a Last Supper (1480); the Palazzo Vecchio, the Apotheosis of St Zenobius (1481-85); the church of S. Trinità, six subjects from the life of St Francis (1485) and an altar-piece, the 'Adoration of the Shepherds' (now in the Florentine Academy); the choir of S. Maria Novella, a series illustrating the lives of the Virgin and the Baptist (1490). Between 1482 and 1484 he painted for Pope Sixtus IV., in the Sistine Chapel at Rome, the excellent fresco 'Christ calling Peter and Andrew,' and about the same time two pictures in the chapel of St Fina at San Gimignano. Besides these he also executed some easel pictures of great merit, as 'Adoration of the Magi' (1488), in the church of the Innocenti at Florence; the 'Visitation of the Virgin' (1491), in the Louvre; the 'Adoration of the Virgin by the Saints,' in the Uffizi at Florence; and 'Christ in Glory,' at Volterra. All these are painted in tempera, and are not free from a certain hardness of outline and of colour. His frescoes are generally characterised by excellent composition, good knowledge of perspective, strength in the outlines, except in the case of feet and hands, and propriety of expression, but often show a tendency to crudeness in colouring. Ghirlandajo inaugurated at Florence the practice of introducing into his sacred pictures portraits of his contemporaries; and the same fondness for local colour is frequently discernible in his landscape backgrounds. He also executed mosaics, that of the 'Annunciation' in the cathedral of Florence being especially celebrated. He died at Florence, 11th January 1494. Michel Angelo was for a time one of his pupils.
His son RIDOLFO (1483-1561) was a painter of considerable merit, whose best pictures are those which show the influence of Fra Bartolommeo and Raphael, such as two scenes from the 'Life of St Zenobius' (in the Uffizi), 'Ascension of the Virgin' (at Prato), and 'Adoration of the Shepherds' (1510, at Pesth).