Coronación de la Virgen

In 1486 Domenico Ghirlandaio ran one of the busiest painting workshops in Florence, turning out frescoes and altarpieces on commission across central Italy. This large panel went south to the hill town of Narni, ordered for a Franciscan church there through the circle of Cardinal Berardo Eroli, a powerful local churchman. Ghirlandaio wove the family into the picture itself: the pillar dividing the scene is laced with ivy, the emblem of the Eroli. Above it the Virgin is crowned in heaven amid ranks of saints, painted in tempera on wood in the clear, orderly manner Florence loved. Within a year or two of finishing it, Ghirlandaio would take on a teenaged apprentice in that Florentine workshop named Michelangelo Buonarroti.