Fra Bartolommeo
By Leader Scott
CHAPTER X.
RIDOLFO GHIRLANDAJO.
A.D. 1483–1560.
RIDOLFO (DI DOMENICO) BIGORDI, called GHIRLANDAJO, &c., was born on the 4th of January, 1483. Although not strictly a scholar, he is one of Fra Bartolommeo’s principal followers. When quite a child he lost his father, the famous Domenico, who died of fever, on January 11th, 1494; his mother and uncle Benedetto only lived a few years after; and Ridolfo, with his three sisters and two brothers, was left to the guardianship of his uncle Davide.
Ridolfo was the only one who chose the family profession, and he became the fourth painter of the name of Ghirlandajo.
Davide was not a perfect artist, although a good mosaicist, as his works in the cathedrals of Orvieto, Siena, and Florence show, but he was for many years Ridolfo’s only instructor. As the boy grew up Ridolfo frequented those public schools of art before spoken of, the Brancacci Chapel, and the study of the cartoons in the Papal Hall. Here he secured the friendship not only of Granacci and Pier di Cosimo, but of Raphael himself, with whom he visited Fra Bartolommeo in his convent.
Raphael permitted Ridolfo to assist him in a Madonna for Siena, and tried to persuade him to accompany him to Rome; but Ridolfo, like a true Florentine, declined to go “beyond sight of the Duomo.”
His first great picture was done in 1504 for the church of San Gallo. The subject was Christ Searing His Cross. His uncle Benedetto had laboured on a similar picture, now in the Louvre, but Ridolfo’s is a great improvement on this; the composition is well balanced, full of force and animation, the weeping figures of the Maries and the solicitude of S. Veronica are very lifelike, although he has not entirely abolished his uncle’s coarseness in the scowling, low-typed men. The Christ and the Virgin are, on the contrary, so refined as to induce the supposition that this force of contrast was intentional; the landscape is rather hard and crude in tone, the flesh tints smooth, and the handling similar to that of Credi.
The original is now in Palazzo Antinori, Florence, but a replica, in which he was assisted by Michele, his favourite pupil and adopted son, is in Santo Spirito.
Vasari speaks of a Nativity, painted for the Cistercian monks of Cestello; a beautiful composition, in which the Madonna adores the holy child, S. Joseph standing near her; S. Francis and S. Jerome kneel in adoration; the landscape was sketched from the hills near “La Vernia," where S. Francis received the stigmata.
Maselli says the picture was lost when the monastery changed hands, but Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle [Footnote: History of fainting, vol. in. chap. xvi. pp. 523, 524.] believe they have found it in the Hermitage at S. Petersburg, under Granacci’s name. It is possible that the favourite pupil of his father and Ridolfo’s own friend may have assisted him. The landscape is Raphaelesque, and might mark the time when that master and Fra Bartolommeo influenced his style. His best manner approached so nearly to that of the Frate, that had he continued he would have very nearly rivalled his excellence.
His two masterpieces are now in the Uffizi; they were painted for the Brotherhood of S. Zenobio, 1510, to stand one on each side of Albertinelli’s Annunciation. One is S. Zenobio (the first bishop and patron saint of Florence) restoring a dead child to life; the other the Funeral Procession of the Saint passing the Baptistery, where an elm tree, which had been withered, put forth fresh leaves as the coffin of the bishop touched it. A marble column, with a bronze tree in relief on it, stands on the spot as a memorial of this miracle. In these two works Ridolfo Ghirlandajo proved the power which was in him, but they are the culmination of his art; he never surpassed, or indeed equalled them again. His richness of colouring and deep relief equalled that of the Frate, the animation and expression rivalled Andrea del Sarto. In the first picture, the eagerness of the crowd, the intense feeling of the mother, in whom grief for the dead child seems almost greater than the hope of his resuscitation, the sturdy, solid character of the Florentines of the Republic, are all given with a masterly hand, while a rich blending of colour fuses the animated crowd in a harmonious unison. In the latter, grandeur and dignity mark the group of ecclesiastics which surrounds the archbishop’s bier, the full solid falls of their drapery show that he had well studied his father’s works.
Ridolfo’s brothers became monks, Don Bartolommeo lived in the Camaldoline Monastery of the Angeli, which Ridolfo beautified with many works. Paolo Uccelli had adorned the Loggia with frescoed stories from the life of S. Benedict. Ridolfo added two to the series. In one the Saint is at table with two angels, waiting for S. Romano to send his bread from the grotto, but the devil has cut the cord and taken it.
Another is S, Benedict investing a youth with the habit of the order. In the church of the same monastery he painted a beautiful Madonna and Child, with Angels, above the holy water vase, and S. Romualdo with the Camaldolese Hermitage in his Hand, in a lunette in the cloister. All these were done as a brotherly gift, and after they were finished, the abbot, Don Andrea Dossi, gave him a commission to paint a Last Supper in the refectory, which he did, placing the portrait of the abbot in the corner.
Ridolfo, like his father, regarded art rather as a means of livelihood than with any aesthetic feelings, and this is probably the reason of his never attaining true excellence. His “bottega” was really a shop where any one might order a work of art, or of artisanship, and he gave as much attention to painting a banner for a procession as to composing an altar-piece. He had a great many assistants, whom he called on for help in various undertakings. They assisted him to prepare the Medici Halls for the reception of Pope Leo X., and later for the marriages of Giuliano and Lorenzo, not disdaining to paint scenes for the dramas which were then given. He painted banners, and designed costumes for the processions of the “potenze,” a festive company, the origin of which is uncertain, but dating certainly from the Middle Ages. Each quarter of the city had an emperor, lords, and dignitaries, each of whom carried his banner or emblazonment. Grand processions, tournaments, and feasts were held once a year, on S. John’s Day, by the potenze.
Having assisted at the triumphs and marriages of the Medici princes, he also furnished the funeral pomp and magnificence on the deaths of the brothers, that of Giuliano occurring in 1516, of Lorenzo 1519.
Lucratively it answered his purpose; the Medici gave him great honour; he was well paid by them, and got the commission to decorate the Chapel of the Palazzo Vecchio–a very good specimen of his fresco painting, in which he never reached his father’s excellence, although in oil he far surpassed him. The chapel is small; the groined roof is covered with emblematical designs on a blue ground, a Trinity in the midst with angels bearing symbols of the passions around. The apostles and evangelists surround this, and the principal wall has a larger fresco of the Annunciation–a rather conventional rendering.
Commissions flowed in on him to such a degree, that although he had fifteen children, he lived to amass money and lands, to see his daughters well married, and his sons prosperous merchants trading to distant lands. He died on the 6th of June, 1561, and lies with his forefathers in the church of S. Maria Novella.
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