File:Portrait of Domenico Bigordi, called Ghirlandaio (14489–1494).jpg

English: Florentine School, 16th century

Portrait of Domenico Bigordi, called Ghirlandaio (1448/9–1494), bust-length, dressed in black and red

inscribed with the identity of the sitter and date: Do .BIGORDI·A·CASAVA: PRIOR. LIBERT / A·D·MCCCCLXXX [1480]

oil on poplar panel, the reverse branded with a fleur-de-lys and initials: RL

60.2 x 46 cm.; 23¾ x 18⅛ in.

The pose and particularly the costume worn in this portrait relate to Bronzino's depiction of Lorenzo il Magnifico de' Medici, dated 1565–69, but their source dates from much earlier. The garments are not those of an artist, but rather those worn by a type of elected official in Republican Florence. The Priorato delle Arti was a government body formed in 1282, made up of representatives from each of the three major guilds, including that of the artists, who served a two-month term, during which time they lived in the Palazzo della Signoria (today the Palazzo Vecchio), with all expenses paid by the government, exercising a wide range of authority, including judicating disputes. In 1458 the Priorato was renamed the Priorato delle Libertà, which accords with the inscription, here: 'Prior Libert'.

The format and size of the panel compares closely to the famous series of portraits held at the Uffizi Gallery, Florence, particularly the series of artist's portraits, many of which are seventeenth-century copies of earlier, lost portraits, each inscribed with the sitter's name, though without a date as there is here. The inscription identifies this sitter as the painter Domenico Ghirlandaio. A self-portrait of Ghirlandaio appears in the crowd, second from the right, in his grand fresco depicting The Expulsion of Joachim from the Temple, which he executed for the Tornabuoni Chapel in Santa Maria Novella, Florence, between 1485-90. That self-portrait was used as the basis for the woodcut for Ghirlandaio's biography in Giorgio Vasari's second edition of Lives of the Artists, of 1568.

We are grateful to Professor Elizabeth Pilliod for suggesting an attribution to Ridolfo Ghirlandaio, and for her help in the cataloguing of this lot; Professor Pilliod will include the painting in a forthcoming publication.