Ridolfo del Ghirladaio

Ridolfo’s father Domenico, who ran one of the most important painting workshops in Florence in Lorenzo the Magnificent’s day, worked closely with his brother Davide who took over his nephew Ridolfo’s training when the lad was prematurely orphaned. The young artist’s style, initially still redolent of the 15th century, began to take new developments in painting on board through contact with Piero di Cosimo, Leonardo da Vinci, Fra’ Bartolomeo and the painters of the School of San Marco. Befriending the young Raphael, Ridolfo became the most successful exponent of Raphael’s style in Tuscany and received commissions from quite a few prestigious patrons including the Medici. Ridolfo’s workshop c. 1510 included numerous pupils and assistants who, though perpetuating his elegant and sophisticated style of painting, yet froze it in a crystalised, academic fashion. As early as the 1530s, Ridolfo gradually began to relinquish his palette in favour of Michele Tosini, his most talented pupil. Tosini eventually took over at the helm of the workshop and turned it, in the second half of the 16th century, into one of the most active and popular such workshops in Florence, on a par with that of Giorgio Vasari.