Gozzoli and the young Ghirlandaio

Gozzoli and the young Ghirlandaio

When Benozzo Gozzoli was painting the wall of the third king in the Medici Chapel between 1459-61, he painted himself for a second time in the procession. His face is above the figure of the falconer and behind a white horse.

Wrapped in a white and blue turban this time, he lifts up his right hand in an awkward position,
with the two middle fingers touching and the two outer fingers splayed apart with the thumb out.
Some art historians have said he is saying with this gesture that he is completing the work "with
his own hand," "da sua mano proprio," but I think the gesture is so specific that it must refer to something more than that. His self-portrait here looks just like his portrait right across the chapel from it, and I think he is

acknowledging the work he has finished up to this point, i.e., three walls completed, and two

more (the altar walls) to go. His serious expression denotes his conscientious undertaking of this project for the Medici family. He is letting them know that he takes his contract to heart and is bound to finish two more walls in the smaller room of the altar. His serious face is also warning the Medici to complete their side of the bargain, too, i.e., to remember to pay him.

He then does complete the side walls in the altar alcove of the chapel; they are the last to be

painted, probably between 1461 and 1463; he did some of the work himself, certainly the angels kneeling whose halos have the Latin of the Gloria written on them:

The angels stand or kneel or fly in the clouds above a landscape of trees, cypresses, duck ponds, villages, and villas.     Kneeling Pink angel on left side:

                                      Kneeling Angels on right side:

 

Closest to the altar and the back wall, behind the kneeling angels, are several curious angel figures who appear to be by a different painter. (These are not the angels who stand and sing the Gloria.) These angels gather roses and stems behind fences that have caught the rose bushes and held them. Upon closer inspection the angels behind the fences are using the roses to form into "ghirlande," garlands. These garlands are meant to decorate the altar where the Virgin kneels with her child and they are rose garlands because roses are the symbols of love, especially the love of the Virgin herself.

One of the angels on the left is accompanied by a peacock, the symbol of eternity, but both are engaged in the process of wrapping roses around a wire or wood frame to make pink rose garlands whose ends can be seen to be held up by other angels at the border of the back scene. See the yellow outlines of the garlands in these superimpositions:









Each of the gatherers has a set of colored wings, a gold foreshortened halo, and a flowing cape on top of the filmy angel dress. Two pick out the roses to be wound into the garlands, the others gather greens and roses into their gowns or assist in holding up the wound flowers. In the right side image, the angel in red holds up the frame to
which will be attached the gathered flowers.

For most viewers these particular angel figures at the back would be hardly noticeable, but they present so many similarities to figures painted later by another major painter, that we must point out the coincidences:

1) THE PEACOCK is in such a peculiar stance with tail spread out and head in profile, exactly as

the peacock appears in Domenico Ghirlandaio's painting of one in his 1480 Last Supper in Ognissanti.

 

 

Identical positions, identical underdrawing? 

2) ANGELS -Then two other angels also are repeated in Ghirlandaio frescoes later:

the angel in white with right hand lifted up is the figure of Abundance in Santa Maria Novella (1485-90):

 

and the angel in blue with roses held in the dress fabric reappears in Ghirlandaio's Salome in the Banquet of Herod in Santa Maria Novella (both step forward with left foot.)

 3) BLOCK ALTAR with sheep atop (painted above the door to the chapel) by Gozzoli is repeated painted above the Last Supper of Ghirlandaio's in 1473 in Badia a Passignano:

 

And if that were not enough connections between the two painters, watch what Ghirlandaio does

when he is asked to paint the Adoration of the Magi in the Life of Mary in his Santa Maria Novella

frescoes of 1485-90. Instead of camels in the procession in the upper right, he paints in the prominent animal

in Lorenzo dei Medici's zoo, the giraffe, with handlers who look much like those with the camels in Gozzoli's procession:

Could Domenico Ghirlandaio have been Gozzoli's assistant towards the end of the Medici Chapel

project? He is born Domenico Bigordi and Vasari claims he is trained by Baldovinetti, but as a fresco painter, he is making clear references to Gozzoli's work in his own, and his skill as a fresco painter could be explained by his having been trained by Gozzoli in Palazzo Medici-Riccardi. He is 13 by 1461, the age for a young apprentice. It could also explain why he received the nickname "Garland maker," not the reason Vasari gives in his second  edition of the Lives in 1568, that his father made silver garland jewellery for the heads of young women in Florence. His appellation would make more sense if he were the young apprentice responsible for painting the "Garland-makers" in the Gozzoli scenes near the altar. "Grillanda" is garland in Italian, and "Garland-maker" is Ghirlandaio. 

If he is the young painter not only of the garlands in the Medici Chapel but of the angels who are garland-makers, it would be reasonable to assume he was given the nickname of "GARLAND-MAKER," GHIRLANDAIO, by the artist in charge of the workshop or by the other apprentices in the workshop. This assumption would explain why several of the figures in this scene on both walls are transposed literally into later paintings by the master when he is in full command himself in the frescoes that gave him fame in Passignano and Santa Maria Novella in Florence. 

It would also explain why he paints in 1485 a self-portrait as a shepherd in the Nativity scene for Santa Trinita and points to a garland that looks just like the garlands in the Medici Chapel

frescoes, this time painted to look like a carved ancient garland on a sarcophagus just behind the

Christ Child.

He is pointing to his nickname, the name with which he became well-known as a painter; it is his way
of writing his signature, just as painting his self-portrait on the right is also a signature.

It might also explain why Ghirlandaio is offered the commission for the Santa Fina Chapel

in the Collegiata of San Gimignano in 1470, 

just as Gozzoli is finishing his fresco of Saint Sebastian in the same church.

The older master of the Medici Chapel helps his younger pupil to get work to help advance his career. He knows the "GARLAND-MAKER" will one day be a greater painter than himself. And, in fact, it is GHIRLANDAIO, not GOZZOLI, who, in 1482, is asked to go to Rome to paint the most important

commission of the day, some of the Vatican Sistine Chapel frescoes.

And it is Ghirlandaio's skill there that is then transferred to his pupil, Michelangelo, who finishes the Chapel with ceiling and altar wall frescoes that become more famous than any of his predecessors.

And isn't Michelangelo looking at Ghirlandaio's Cain and Abel in Passignano and reversing the

figures in his Creation of Adam?

The influence of one painter is passed down to another, who, in turn, passes it down to his more

famous pupil. Gozzoli's little "garland-maker" is taught well by his mentor and, he, in turn, teaches his own little "divine fresco-maker," "Il Divin Michelangelo," the terms of the trade.