DOMENICO GHIRLANDAIO, Giovanna Tornabuoni, 1488.
- Oil and tempera on wood, approx. 2' 6" x 1' 8". Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Madrid, Spain
- Domenico Ghirlandaio's portrait shows a refined and sensitive aristocratic young woman in a profile pose.
- Domenico Ghirlandaio produced this portait of an aristocratic young woman, probably Giovanna Tornabuoni, a member of the powerful Albizzi family and wife of Lorenzo Tournabuoni.
- Though artists of this age had moved away from employing the profile pose to convey a character reading, this portrait reveals the proud bearing of a sensitive and beautiful young woman.
- It tells viewers much about the advanced state of culture in Florence, the value and careful cultivation of beauty in life and art, the breeding of courtly manners, and the great wealth behind it all.
- The painting also shows the powerful attraction classical liaterature help for Italian humanists; in the background an epitaph quotes the ancient Roman poet Martial.
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