Original subtitles

Good afternoon. I want to share two painters with you today who share a common interest

in decorative art, in a sense, in large decorative frescoes. They also share an interest in the

daily life of Florence and particularly in the public daily life of Florence. Many of the Renaissance

cities delighted in a kind of pageantry and loved to represent that in their art. The opportunity to

decorate ecclesiastical chapels and palatial chambers was one of the distinctive features

of the Italian Renaissance. In medieval times such ensembles did exist, of course, but the

instances were multiplied in the Quattrocento. In this lecture I want to look at the work of two

painters who painted noted decorative ensembles. The painters are Benozzo Gozzoli, G-O-Z-Z-O-L-I,

and Domenico Ghirlandaio, G-H-I-R-L-A-N-D-A-I-O, Domenico Ghirlandaio. The two artists were separated

by a generation, yet they are linked by their innate interest in decorative painting and

specifically by a fascination with the civic life of Florence in its overtly public aspect.

They therefore, it follows, incorporated portraits of well-known contemporaries into their narrative

compositions, while continuing the Renaissance exploration of pictorial space, both in landscape

and in architectural settings. Benozzo Gozzoli, born in 1420 and died in 1497, is best known for his

fresco decoration of the private chapel in the Medici Palace, painted between 1459 and 1461, and it's that project

which I will have represent his art in this lecture. The Medici Palace was a new palace, and being

outfitted and decorated, and here you are looking at a view into the chapel, the private chapel of the

Palazzo Medici, painted between 1459 and 1461. Around 1450, Gozzoli had assisted Fra Angelico in the

decoration of the chapel of Pope Nicholas V in the Vatican, and it has been surmised that Fra Angelico

might have recommended his former associate to Piero de Medici for the work in the relatively new Palazzo

Medici. Certainly, Gozzoli had done no remarkable work of his own at that time, so it may have been a matter of

recommendation. As you look into the chapel, before I look at just a couple of individual scenes or

details here, I might be able to point out some things. It's difficult to to read. It's a relatively

small room, relatively palatial, palace speaking, it's relatively small, and it is frescoed on all the

walls, and there is an altarpiece, as you would expect. But you can see here, and I just wanted to point out,

that you see a procession of men on horseback with a landscape behind them, a very elaborate landscape,

and I think you can make it out even in this foreshortened view. And what I wanted to point

out was that the scene continues from this wall to this wall. Now, I won't be able to show you

both walls in an individual image, but you see the scene is continuous, and one of the cleverest things

he does is right here, just before the corner of the room. Right at that point, in front of the white horse,

you see two horses who have turned at right angles as though they were about to walk onto the next wall,

step onto the next wall, and they're seen in sharp foreshortening. They're still on the left-hand wall,

but they're making their turn in preparation, as it were, for the for the other wall. And then I'll point

out this figure because you can see him fairly strongly. This was a very notable figure who had

visited Florence and Italy some years before. It was the Eastern Emperor John Palaeologus,

and I'll show you a detail of him and say a word more about that. Now, in this room you have,

as the subject, the overall subject of this fresco, the procession of the Magi moving along, and they

are on their way to Bethlehem. It is, in other words, the members of the Medici family have been put into

the roles of the three Magi and their attendants as they proceed to Bethlehem. It's a wonderful

opportunity to combine portraiture in this manner with the biblical subject. It has often been said and

as often doubted that one member or another of the Medici family is shown, but it is generally accepted

that this figure right here is Lorenzo de' Medici, the figure in the light costume here. But they have

identified the first king as a portrait of Cosimo de' Medici, the second of John Palaeologus, whom I'll show

you in a second, and the third as Lorenzo de' Medici. Look for a moment at the wonderful landscape which

stretches, stretches behind, behind this. It is, it is fanciful. It is certainly Tuscan, but nonetheless a very

fanciful landscape. And despite the fact that perspective has been used, aerial perspective certainly,

to establish some of this. It is much more in the manner of a Medieval tapestry, in that the landscape

rises up. Yes, it's a hill, but he uses that to make it rise up and fill the picture plane. There's

very little sky here at all. So it becomes an overall decorative texture, very reminiscent of Medieval and

Renaissance tapestries, which were hung in chapels frequently and other parts of palaces. So this is

quite a, quite a fascinating arrangement. He uses these large trees, large, long trees here, to divide

and give rhythm to the composition. I told you about the two figures who make the right-hand turn. Here they

are right here. This is the corner of the room, and the next wall is immediately to the right at right

angles. And these two horses turn, like good parade horses, to continue on the next wall. This is John

Palaeologus. Now John VII Palaeologus was the Byzantine Emperor. And the reason that John Palaeologus

arrived here was that he had been in Italy was because in 1438 there was a major, a major meeting

held in Italy in order to try to heal the rift between the Western Christian Church and the Eastern

Christian Church. You might say between the, between the Roman Christian and the Byzantine

Christian Church. And that rift was growing wider and there was a desire, as there was from time to time,

and continues to be from time to time, in Christian history to bring those two branches together. And in

1438, John Palaeologus had come to Italy and come to Florence as part of that, though the meeting wasn't in

Florence. And he was very well known. His visage was well known because, of course, he was dressed in, in a

different manner, and so was his entourage. And he was painted, and his likeness was put on coins and

medals. It was, he was extremely well known. Now we're much farther along here, but they still remember

him, and so they have still included him in their family memory as a kind of guest of the Medici, as it

were in this, in this palace. I go back now to the long view of the preceding wall to point out once again

the figure of Lorenzo de Medici, almost surely, I think this is quite acceptable, of the figure in the

light yellow or pale gold costume in the foreground. It seems more likely than not that the, that there are

many, many portraits here. You can spot a portrait in a group of figures, pretty obviously. They're

self-conscious, and they have very specific features and so forth, and, and it's not unlikely that the

Medici clan have, have placed themselves here. The gorgeousness of the colors, and it really is the

color of this chapel, which is wonderful, I think, and the festive mood, which is, you will admit,

unexpected in a chapel, would seem to me to suggest that the Medici were indulging themselves at a time

when they felt more at ease in their huge new palace, which had been begun in 1444, that proclaimed

their power and their presence in Florence as never before. Gozzoli created this masterpiece when he

was 39 years old, and he never again had such an opportunity. He probably never equaled this creation

in the remaining 38 years of his long life. Nonetheless, it ranks as one of the most splendid decorative

ensembles of mid-century. Domenico Ghirlandaio, who was born in 1449 and died in 1494, was a more accomplished

artist, I think we can agree, whose rather early death was greatly mourned by Florence, by his patrons and

friends. He left a legacy that seems to me more admirable every time I encounter it, every time I see

the major chapels that he painted. In particular, he had the opportunity to paint two large fresco groups

in major Florentine churches, where, of course, they were seen by a far wider public than ever saw

Gazzoli's Chapel, which was sequestered in the Medici Palace. That's important to recall. The churches were

Santa Trinita and Santa Maria Novella, and there, in convincingly painted architectural spaces,

he staged scenes from biblical and modern church history with actors graced with the features of

Florence's leading citizens. Domenico Ghirlandaio was a rather complex painter, and he was a good

businessman. With his brother, Davide, Davide it should be pronounced, and other members of his family,

he formed a firm that was the most sought after in Florence for large projects. He was trained as a

metal worker. His father made golden garlands for fashionable women. The name Ghirlandaio means

garland maker, and he sometimes signed himself with a garland, with the device of a garland,

in his paintings. Yet Ghirlandaio was sufficiently highly regarded in his early 30s to be invited to join

the very distinguished painters working in the newly constructed Sistine Chapel in Rome. Before we go to

Rome, however, we want to look at a fresco that he may have completed before he departed for Rome.

It is a fresco of the Last Supper. It is in the small refectory. There are two refectories,

the small refectory of the Monastery of San Marco, where Fra Angelico did so much work.

This is the Last Supper, painted probably about 1480. We have seen, of course, the Last Supper of

Andrea del Castagno, and so you have perhaps in your mind that as a good contrast and comparison

with this image. The apostles are rather more relaxed and natural in pose than the statuesque

gentleman who we saw in Andrea del Castagno's Last Supper. And the appointments of the room and the

design of the table are fashionably Florentine. It's as though they rented this and had it catered

for the event. By far the most striking aspect of this painting, however, is the open double arcade,

looking out into the tops of trees. Remember, this was an upper room, and he takes that quite literally

from the scripture. And besides the trees, many of which are fruit trees, the sky is dotted with birds.

I might add that undoubtedly much of the fruit and many of the birds have symbolic significance as well.

It almost goes without saying. And from the architecture, Ghirlandaio fashions the most striking

of his narrative devices. And that is the downward thrust of one of the vaults, the central one,

which terminates in a console that, like a giant arrow, points directly to the group of Jesus,

John the Evangelist, the sleeping on his side, and Judas on this side, the near side of the table.

This isn't as dramatically subtle as Castagno's marble panel with its little storm, but it's certainly

effective. It certainly focuses our attention on this figure. In Rome, when he arrived in Rome in late

1481 or early 1482, he was working with a team of painters that had been gathered there by Pope Sixtus

the Fourth. Now, we haven't yet seen any of the fresco decoration for the then new Sistine Chapel.

We will see other scenes by other artists, but right now I think you need a brief

word of explanation and introduction. The Calling of Peter and Andrew, which is the scene that he painted

here, is one of a series of scenes painted in 1482 that surrounded the chapel. The chapel,

the Sistine Chapel, as you may know, is named for the pope, Sixtus becomes Sistine, Sixtus IV della

Rovere, who ordered it to be constructed and decorated with a belt of frescoes that encircled the chapel

below the window level. All of the artists were called from Tuscany or other areas of central Italy.

They were all experienced in the art of fresco painting. You have to know that Rome at this time

was still emerging from the middle ages, rather late in 1482, and had no school of artists of its

own that it could really turn to for such work, and so these artists were brought down. It is also true

that the pope was not a Roman and that he was from the north, but these were brought into town,

a large group of important, very important artists of the day, to work on the chapel. This

is the one fresco we look at today from that chapel, and it is the calling of Peter and Andrew,

a group of foreground figures here which enact part of the biblical story, as two saints kneel at the

feet of Christ. But then there is the background as well. In the left middle distance, right here,

the figure in blue and pink, is Christ again. You see he's dressed the same, but this is when he is

calling Peter and Andrew, and they're almost invisible. They've just landed in their boat,

in their fishing boat, and you can just see their heads. Over here, more prominently, another boat,

and Christ again calling two further apostles, James and John. These were called from their fishing to

become fishers of men, as the Bible puts it. On the right hand side, in the foreground, is a very large

group of portraits of contemporaries. Not all of them, by any means, have been identified, but it's quite

clear that they've all lined up, in a sense, to have their pictures made and included within this wonderful,

wonderful religious event. The landscape is really very beautiful. Not Roman, by the way,

it looks more like northern Italy than it does like Rome, but a marvelous landscape which moves back

into the great distance of the wall. Yet the integrity of the wall surface, there's always a problem in

fresco making, in large frescoes, in an architectural interior, not to punch too much of a hole in the

wall unless you want to go all the way into illusionistic painting. And so the main figures and the main

scene scene is right across the front. They're standing right at the front edge. They establish

that like a like a freeze and your eye stays on the front. When he finished this work, he returned

to Florence, and in Florence, his principal work was the decoration of large chapels with pictorial cycles.

And first I show you Santa Trinita. And I show you not the fresco, one of the frescoes at this moment,

but rather the altarpiece. He painted the frescoes for the whole chapel, and he painted the altarpiece,

which you see here, The Adoration of the Shepherds, in 1485. It's one of his finest paintings, a very

beautiful painting indeed, The Adoration of the Shepherds, striking for a couple of different reasons

here. One of it is, one reason is all of the classical architecture which he's put in. Here's a triumphal

arch on the left, with the procession probably of the magi coming through. The shepherds have already

arrived here at the right. This is classical, supporting the shed. We have classical piers.

And the manger here is a classical sarcophagus at the bottom, which of course is full of symbolic

significance as well. But it is famous, I suppose, for the three shepherds, because not only are they

realistic, let's put it this way, not only have the shepherds come to see the Christ child, but they've

come a long way. They've come from the Netherlands. I say that facetiously because they have a

Netherlandish realism to them. They have the stamp of Flemish painting of the 15th century in their

realism, and there's a very good reason for this. I'll get to it in just a moment. Let me say something

about the man who brought us this chapel, that is to say the patron. It's the Sassetti chapel,

and Francesco Sassetti was a Florentine banker and the Medici representative in Avignon and Lyon.

When I say representative, I mean in their businesses, principally banking in the north.

He wanted to decorate a chapel in his family church, and he wanted to decorate it with scenes

connected with his patron saint, Francesco Frances. It is a work which in the strikingly realistic,

I'm back now to the altarpiece, in the strikingly realistic portrayal of the shepherds, clearly reveals

the impact of a particular great work of contemporary Flemish art that had recently arrived in Florence,

the Portanari altarpiece by Hugo van der Goess. Hugo van der Goess, G-O-E-S, is an extraordinary artist,

and the Portanari altarpiece which shows the adoration of the shepherds. Again, this is a larger painting,

but the Madonna kneeling, Christ on the ground, being adored by the Madonna, Saint Joseph over here,

and the shepherds who have come in over here and which are so very much like, they anticipate so much,

those done in 1485 by Ghirlandaio. The Portanari altarpiece, I have to give you the history of this,

was painted 10 years before the last altarpiece, 1475. It was commissioned by another Florentine

living in the north. His name was Tommaso Portanari. He was a Medici agent, but in Bruges, and he

commissioned it from one of the great Netherlandish painters of the day, Hugo van der Goess. Now what is

most unusual about it, if you know Flemish painting, it is more likely to be very small than to be very

large. So this painting is quite an anomaly, because it is the size of Italian paintings of the day.

Of course, because he wanted an altarpiece that would compete with the Italian artists that were

in the same church, and so forth, and so he commissioned for his family chapel a very large

painting. And it's very interesting to see that Hugo van der Goess, accustomed to working small,

had no problem, it seems at all, in working very large and still retaining the Flemish realism of

description of faces and so forth that we had. In this triptych, you're looking at the whole thing.

On the left and right, you have members of the Portanari family, the males on the left,

the women on the right. Together with, they are kneeling and they're small, this is hieratic

scale, their patron saints are much larger than they are, and they stand behind them on both sides.

And that would have, could have folded originally to cover, as triptychs do, to cover the central part

if you were closing it, closing it up. But the central panel is the one which was so influential

at this point and on Ghirlandaion. And by the way, I said it was an anomaly because it was so large in

Florence and for a Florentine, for a Flemish painting. It was also the largest oil painting in the world

world at the time that it was made, rather startling. One of the frescoes in the same chapel

is Pope Honorius III, approving the Franciscan rule. I told you the subject of the chapel was Franciscan.

This is the approval of the order of, of the Franciscans. It's set in Florence, wonderfully set in Florence,

because the background architecture here, as you look over the, over this, this wall or

separating device here, in the background you see the Piazza della Signoria, with Palazzo Vecchio here to

the left, and the large open loggia, which came to be known as the Loggia dei Lanzi, in the center.

A dei Lanzi means of the lances or lancers. This is where the guards, the public guard, gathered

at one point in Florentine history. This is an area today where sculpture is displayed, as you may know.

What is also intriguing about this is a little spatial trick that he's played here in this fresco,

which is at the top, as you can see, of the wall where, where it goes into the vault. He has figures

emerging up a staircase out of the bottom of the fresco and into the space where the pope has

gathered to, to approve the Franciscan order. It's, it's a rather startling emergence from,

from this cellar we imagine below the, below the space. Let me show you the facade of the Church of

Santa Maria Novella. I get almost no chance to talk to you about Alberti's architecture. We've talked about

his writings on painting, but, uh, Leon Battista Alberti had several important commissions, as was

this, and completed only in 1470. It is the facade for the Church. Only the facade for Santa Maria Novella.

That is an older church, but with a Renaissance facade. And one thing that I want to point out about

it are these volutes on both sides, this curving, this sort of flattened, uh, double curve here,

with a circular medallion in the middle. It is meant to help disguise the flying buttresses, the buttresses

of the Gothic Church. They didn't fly very far, but the buttresses of the Gothic Church behind it, so that

you didn't see the older church, and to connect the two parts of the, of the composition. The top,

this is basically a temple facade that he has adapted for use as a church, uh, but he has to still retain

the central nave and the two side aisles. It has to be reflected, uh, in the, uh, in the composition. So,

you've had an opportunity at least to see one of Alberti's works. In this church, which we've already

visited to see Masaccio's Trinity, we're now going to look at the major chapel, Cappella Maggiore, the

chancel, the same area that Piero della Francesca painted at Arezzo, is painted here, that is to say,

the altar area from the crossing to the apse. Giovanni Tornobuoni, who was the head of the family who

commissioned this particular, uh, chapel, uh, dedicated the, dedicated it to the life of the Virgin Mary,

and scenes also of John the Baptist. And I'm showing you, uh, a particular scene, uh, which is, uh, a particular detail,

which is taken from the scene in which Zachariah, who is the father of the Baptist, receives the

annunciation that he will be a father, another of those, those stories. Off to one side, amidst a great number of, um, of, um,

important persons and lesser persons, there are portraits of the family, the Tornobuoni family itself,

but they're also major figures. And here we see, uh, four, three, there are four figures here, but three

of them are very notable, uh, people of the time. Uh, Angelo Poliziano, Poliziano, a famous humanist,

who is looking at us, second from the right, looking in our direction, but not at us. And then two older

figures, Marsilio, uh, Ficino, uh, at the left. Marsilio Ficino was a Neoplatonic philosopher and

also the tutor for a time to Lorenzo de' Medici, and in the foreground, uh, Cristoforo Landino, uh, who was a

writer and the editor of Dante's Divine Comedy. These are very important humanists of the period, and they

have been, uh, been, uh, memorialized for us here. Let me show you another detail, this one from the

Visitation. The Visitation is the scene where the, where Mary, who is pregnant with, uh, Jesus, uh,

goes to meet her cousin Elizabeth, who is present, uh, pregnant with the Baptist, and they meet, uh,

and that moment of their meeting is called the Visitation. It's seen just to the left in this detail

here, but I want to point out to you that there are more portraits in the, uh, in the women who are

standing like, uh, like courtiers about here, or ladies-in-waiting, and this particular one here,

the very statuesque and very beautiful woman in profile, is Giovanna Tornobuoni, uh, the daughter

of the family. She died not long after the fresco was made, and Ghirlandaio painted a posthumous

portrait on a panel taken directly from this fresco image, and I wanted to show it to you. It's very

beautiful, uh, painted about 1488 to 1490, uh, in commemoration of the, of the, uh, daughter that

had died. This is in today in Madrid in the Thyssen Museum. Let me show you finally the birth of the

Virgin Mary. 1485 to 1490 is the date of this fresco. It is one of the best-known scenes from the

chancel in, um, Santa Maria Novella from the, from the Tornobuoni Chapel, uh, and it shows the birth of

the Virgin. Let me start at the left. There's this wonderful greeting, which looks, uh, almost like the

visitation, but a greeting at the top of the, uh, staircase here. It may, it may be intended to

allude to the visitation. In any event, uh, a visitor comes through the door is met. You have this

wonderful staircase. The room is constructed with beautiful, uh, Renaissance perspective, completely,

and completely under control. Uh, and then on the, uh, we have a group of women, and again, many of

these are portraits, who have come, uh, in, as it were, been brought in on attendance for the birth of the,

of, uh, the child Mary, of the Virgin Mary. Uh, Saint Anne lies in bed here. The child has been delivered.

She's being held by one of the midwives. Another of the attendants pours water into a pitcher, you,

into a, uh, into a container below. What you see here, in a very elegant version, is everyday life,

at a certain level, in Venice, in Florence, a certain level of, uh, elegance and, uh, and wealth. Uh,

the room has a paneling at the back, which has decorations based on Roman decoration. It has a frieze,

a sculptured frieze on both sides at the top of Putti, um, and so it, uh, emulates this. And by the way,

the architecture itself, the architecture painted in the painting, is very much like the architecture

of the chapel itself. It blends in with the chapel. It's a kind of religious genre painting, in that it

recreates the ancient story, the biblical story, in contemporary Florentine terms. The architecture,

the costumes, the customs, are all faithful to cost, to Quattrocento reality. Uh, the, the,

the sculptured frieze of Putti, the perspective control, the architecture that relates to the chapel,

all of this is beautifully, beautifully handled. It may be, this is a matter of taste, it may be that

you find, uh, Ghirlandaio's obsessive fascination with embedding contemporary Florentine life into

biblical scenes, um, a bit prosaic, that it renders his narratives a bit prosaic, um, like a reporter.

And yet, at the same time, because of it, they have immediacy. They connect with daily life.

They are beautiful in their fresh colors. They are excellent decorations. And they are among

Ghirlandaio's most splendid works. It is, by the way, certainly interesting and appropriate to know

that among Ghirlandaio's many apprentice assistants in the last years of his life

was the young Michelangelo who learned the rudiments of fresco technique

from one of its most proficient Florentine practitioners. Thank you for your attention.