Towards a New Chronology for Ridolfo Ghirlandaio and Michele Tosini

• Autores: David Franklin
• Localización: Burlington magazine, ISSN 0007-6287, Vol. 140, Nº 1144, 1998, págs. 445-455
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • In an article published in this Magazine in 1993, I attempted to provide fixed dates for some surviving altar-pieces produced by Ridolfo Ghirlandaio and his workshop in the second decade of the sixteenth century,' and suggested that the received view of Ridolfo's production prior to 1520 should be modified. The elevated patronage he received from the Medici and other prominent Florentine families and corporations - which still awaits thorough study - should alone justify serious interest in his work. Ridolfo is also one of the relatively few renaissance artists who came to move in the same circles as their patrons. In 1510 he married Contessina di Giovanbatista di Bianco Deti, from a family who could boast a Gonfaloniere of Justice as early as 1344,2 and he himself was apparently made 'de collegio' under the Medici principate,3 so becoming eligible for political office, although there is no evidence that he ever assumed such a role. He was, however, chosen by the confraternity of S. Maria della Croce al Tempio in Florence to be captain, with Manni Albizi, of the Quarter of San Giovanni in 1535 as a hitherto unknown document shows.4 Given Vasari's constant stress on the status of artists, it is surprising that he did not make more of Ridolfo's social standing. However, the tone of his biography of Ridolfo is perfectly neutral and uncritical, and one might be forgiven for supposing that he preferred Ridolfo to, for example, his greatly superior but more various and difficult contemporary, Pontormo.