XIX
DOMENICO GHIRLANDAJO
1449-1494
The third great master of Lorenzo de' Medici's age, who shared with Botticelli and Filippino in all the most important works of the day, and enjoyed the same high reputation among his fellow-citizens, was Domenico Ghirlandajo. Born in 1449, he was the son of a silk merchant named Tommaso Bigordi and began life in the shop of a goldsmith who had acquired some reputation as a maker of the gold and silver garlands commonly worn by Florentine women. To this circumstance Domenico and his younger brother David owed the nickname of "del Ghirlandajo," in Tuscan dialect, Grillandajo, by which they became generally known. Domenico early practised his hand at portrait-painting by taking drawings of the men and women whom he saw in the streets, and he soon left the goldsmith's shop to study painting under Alesso Baldovinetti. Both his natural gifts and early training fitted him for the position which he holds as the chief of the Florentine realists. Essentially prosaic by nature, and lacking alike the artistic feeling of Sandro and the grace of
