Domenico di Tommaso di Currado Bigordi Ghirlandaio (1449-1494), Florentine painter. He was known particularly for his detailed, naturalistic frescoes, and for the portraits they contain. The Saint Francis cycle in the Church of Santa Trinita is known for its portraits of Florentine citizens and for its setting of the cycle of the life of St. Francis in the context of Florentine buildings, the Palazzo Vecchio, for example, and the facade of the church of Santa Trinita. The fresco cycles of the Life of St. John the Baptist and the Life of the Virgin were readily accessible and well known to Ruskin. They were commissioned for the Tornabuoni Chapel in Santa Maria Novella, Florence, and completed to his designs after his death. He was interested in ancient architecture, and spent time in Rome making detailed drawings, and these provided material for the setting of his paintings. He was also interested in Flemish painting, and the naturalistic detail found in it, though unlike the northern painters, and unlike most of his contemporaries he did not use oil. Madonna enthroned with Angels and Saints, originally painted for San Giusto degli Ingesuati, and now in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence is an example of such work. (See Kecks, Ghirlandaio: Catalogo Completo, and Querman, Ghirlandaio 1449-1494).
Ruskin here does not challenge the standard views of Ghirlandaio's reputation. At Works, 4.323 Ruskin refers to his 'keen, though prosaic, sense of nature', but complains that he 'at last walled himself up among gilded entablatures'. At Works, 23.313 there is a later and even more negative account of Ghirlandaio - 'And it is all simply -- good for nothing'.