HISTORY AND LEGEND IN A RENAISSANCE CHAPEL. Francesco Sassetti and Ghirlandaio at Santa Trinita, Florence

EVE BORSOOK AND JOHAN OFFERHAUS

1981. 4to. 93 pp. text with three appendices, bibliography and index and 90 plates (4 in color). Cloth bound with dustjacket.

ISBN 90 7028 803 6

This is the first complete monograph of what is generally considered to be the most beautiful late Quattrocento chapel in Florence. Begun 500 years ago, Ghirlandaio's work for Sassetti, the general manager of the Medici Bank, turned out to be the masterpiece of the painter's career. Because this was due as much to the intellectual formulation of the themes conceived and articulated by others, the discussion focuses on the chapel and its programme rather than upon a consideration of the paintings within Ghirlandaio's entire oeuvre. Here art, humanism, politics and religion were blended into a pictorial 'summa' of the ideals of Medicean Florence in the years immediately following the Pazzi Conspiracy.

The appendices include all the known documents (several hitherto unpublished), an account of the technique and condition of the paintings, and a chronological table of relevant historical events.