In fact, the Preface states, along with its requisite acknowledgments to friends and family, that the book looks at the artist “from the point of view of the artisan context” (ix), which is defined as guild traditions, workshop organization, and social position. But what does this really mean? Is Jean Cadogan simply trying to suggest that Domenico Ghirlandaio worked not only with his mind (artist), but also with his hands (artisan), that he was both less and more than a pure artist-a craftsman or tradesman or guildsman? The fact that the author has to use both terms points to a trend in art history that takes into account what in other fields, say anthropology or American studies, would be called the material culture of the period, the circumstances under which works of art were produced, rather than just the study of their “residue” or the works themselves. An artist has to be something more, value added, both artist and artisan, as in fact almost all artists were in the late quattrocento. The subtitle of this beautifully produced and authoritative book-”Artist and Artisan”-betrays an uneasiness typical of the times in which we live, when the concept of the artist per se has to be qualified or defended. Performance Art/Performance Studies/Public Practice.Museum Practice/Museum Studies/Curatorial Studies/Arts Administration.Drawings/Prints/Work on Paper/Artistc Practice.Digital Media/New Media/Web-Based Media.Architectural History/Urbanism/Historic Preservation.Subject, Genre, Media, Artistic Practice.For over 500 years these vivid frescoes have played across the walls of the chapel like a continuously looping documentary film, chronicling the living history of Florence. The conflation of time past and time present in the frescoes is also underscored by the inclusion, in many scenes, of late-fifteenth century members of the Tornabuoni family in the biblical subjects, floating across the stage like ghostly apparitions.

When you peer through the arches of these Lego-land wonders, you see the solid, sturdy, stone medieval façades of Florence-no matter where he goes in his imagination, for Ghirlandaio, Florence is the whole world. Although the primary narratives depicted in the Tornabuoni Chapel are scenes from the Life of John the Baptist and from the Life of the Virgin, these biblical scenes unfold in the streets of Florence, often staged in what appear to be temporary stage-sets, theatrical triumphal arches and temples, strewn with various bits of ancient Roman bric-a-brac, hastily assembled for the biblical actors. In contrast to the solid, stoic and severe formal classicism of the earlier generation of Alberti, Brunelleschi and Masaccio, Ghirlandaio loved form, color, variety, narrative and the quotidian (everyday) details of Florentine daily life.

Ghirlandaio loved Florence and fresco, and he adored the world and all of its charms.

Domenico Ghirlandaio by Maria Tsaneva