Domenico Ghirlandaio

Domenico Ghirlandaio (1448–1494) was born in Florence and took his name from his father, whose garland-like headdresses for Florentine women earned the family its nickname. He was apprenticed to Alesso Baldovinetti and, by one scholar's account, to Andrea del Verrocchio, and went on to run a large and efficient workshop with his brothers Davide and Benedetto and his brother-in-law Bastiano Mainardi. Michelangelo was among the apprentices who passed through it. He is best known for his fresco cycles, which set portraits of contemporary Florentines within religious narratives. In 1481 Sixtus IV summoned him to Rome to work on the Sistine Chapel walls, where he painted the Vocation of the Apostles. In Florence he painted the life of Saint Francis in the Sassetti Chapel at Santa Trinita, whose altarpiece shows what he learned from Hugo van der Goes's Portinari Altarpiece, and the Tornabuoni Chapel in Santa Maria Novella, completed in 1490. Here: Visitation.