Madonna and Child

This comes from the 1470s in Florence, early in Ghirlandaio's career, before the big fresco cycles that made his name. It is a plain, tender thing, Mary in a red dress and deep blue cloak, the child held close, painted for private prayer rather than a public wall. Ghirlandaio would go on to run one of the busiest workshops in the city, turning out altarpieces and portraits for Florentine families at the height of the Medici years. That workshop matters for a reason beyond his own pictures. It was there, a little over a decade after a small Madonna like this one, that he took on a teenage apprentice named Michelangelo.