Domenico Ghirlandaio was one of the most popular artists in fifteenth-century Florence. He worked in a variety of media, including panel paintings, wall murals, mosaic, and manuscript illumination, and his workshop - to which Michelangelo was apprenticed - was highly influential. This beautiful book offers a radically new interpretation of Ghirlandaio’s life and work, viewing him primarily as an artisan active within the craft traditions, guild structure, and workshop organizations of his day. Jean K. Cadogan argues that Ghirlandaio was a pivotal figure in the transformation of the artist from medieval artisan to Renaissance genius. She traces his gradual social elevation, which reflected the increasing respect with which he was treated by his patrons. And she notes that the changes in the way he and other artists were viewed created a milieu that encouraged innovation in technique, style, and content, qualities that were vividly displayed in Ghirlandaio’s work. Cadogan explains how his working method, his pragmatic, artisan approach to technique, the organization and functioning of his workshop, and his relations with his patrons affected the works of art Ghirlandaio produced. Her text is complemented by a catalogue raisonné of Ghirlandaio’s works in all media as well as an appendix of documents useful for scholars.

Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449-94) together with his brother, Davide, supervised an extensive Florentine studio where the young Michelangelo was apprenticed for three years.

The focus of the volume, in addition to standard features such as the bibliographical update on 15th-c. theater, is on late-medieval authors as literary critics. Founded in 1977 as the publication organ for the Fifteenth-Century Symposium, Fifteenth-Century Studies has appeared annually since then. It publishes essays on all aspects of life in the fifteenth century, including literature, drama, history, philosophy, art, music, religion, science, and ritual and custom. The editors strive to do justice to the most contested medieval century, a period that has long been the stepchild of research. The fifteenthcentury defies consensus on fundamental issues: some scholars dispute, in fact, whether it belonged to the middle ages at all, arguing that it was a period of transition, a passage to modern times. At issue, therefore, is the verytenor of an age that stood under the influence of Gutenberg, Columbus, the Devotio Moderna, and Humanism. Along with the standard updating of bibliography on 15th-c. theater, this volume is devoted to research on late-medieval authors as literary critics. Thus, for the historian as well as the writer of fiction, the tenuous limits between truth and fantasy (and the role of doubt) are investigated. If there are several eyewitness accounts of an event, which one can be trusted? Medieval memorialists sometimes became advisors to princes and used a rhetoric of careful persuasion. Values such as chivalry, courtly love, and kingly self-representation come up for discussion here.Several essays ponder the structure of poetic forms and popular genres, and others consider more factual topics such as incunabula on medications, religious literature in the vernacular for everyday use, a student's notebook on magic, and late medieval merchants, money, and trade. Contributors: Edelgard DuBruck, Karen Casebier, Emma J. Cayley, Albrecht Classen, Michael G. Cornelius, Jean Dufornet, Catherine Emerson, Leonardas V. Gerulaitis, Kenneth Hodges, Sharon M. Loewald, Luca Pierdominici, Michel J. Raby, Elizabeth I. Wade. Edelgard E. DuBruck is professor emerita in the Modern Languages Department at Marygrove College in Detroit; Barbara I. Gusick is professor emerita of English at Troy University-Dothan, Dothan, Alabama.