Vasari praises Ghirlandaio for his excellent portraits; one bishop in the Santa Trinita fresco is 'known to be a painting only because you cannot hear him', and for being the 'first to imitate the colour of ornaments of gold and other materials'( Vasari, Le Vite, Testo III.478).
Kugler comments that:
The aim of the artists was no longer external form for itself, no longer a beautiful and true imitation of the circumstances of nature in the abstract: it was a predilection for particular forms, for particular circumstances, and especially for grand and important relations of life, for the glory and dignity of his native city... Ghirlandajo, again, usually places the scene of the sacred event in the domestic and citizen life of the time, and introduces, with the real costume of the spectators, the architecture of Florence, in the richest display and complete perspective... The accessories [in the fresco of St. Jerome in the Ognissanti church] present a perfect specimen of still-life painting in the manner of the Flemish painters of the time. ( Kugler, ed. Eastlake, Handbook of the History of Painting, Part One, The Italian Schools, First Edition, p. 120)