Davide Ghirlandaio

Davide Ghirlandaio, also recorded as David Ghirlandaio and by the family name Davide Bigordi (David Bigordi), was born in Florence in 1452 and died in Florence in 1525. Exact day and month of birth and death are not documented in any source consulted for this profile.

Davide trained within his brother Domenico's workshop in Florence, following the standard guild apprenticeship model of the period rather than attendance at any formal school; he is documented as a workshop partner and full master by the 1480s.

Davide's own documented contributions include predella panels, painted around 1479, for the San Giusto alle Mura altarpiece commissioned from Domenico, now held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He also worked in mosaic and stained glass, contributing to the mosaic decoration of Orvieto Cathedral and Siena Cathedral, and to stained glass for the tribune of Pisa Cathedral, since destroyed. Per the National Gallery, London, he also worked alongside his brothers on the Sistine Chapel frescoes in Rome after 1482. When Domenico died in 1494, Davide took over the family workshop and trained Domenico's son, Ridolfo Ghirlandaio, who went on to a significant painting career of his own.

No exact, attributable critical quotes about Davide Ghirlandaio from named critics in major outlets were located in current research. Institutional framing instead dominates the record: the National Gallery, London notes that only a few works have been recognized as his and that his independent identity, separate from Domenico's, has only recently been reconstructed by scholarship. The Metropolitan Museum of Art and other institutional sources, in describing the portrait Selvaggia Sassetti, similarly present his authorship as a matter of recent attribution rather than settled art history. The consistent theme across institutional sources is one of ongoing connoisseurship, separating Davide's hand from the much larger and more thoroughly studied output of his brother's workshop.

Davide Ghirlandaio has no contemporary gallery or estate representation; as an Old Master, his work is traded through auction houses and otherwise resides in museum or ecclesiastical collections rather than circulating commercially. The best-documented auction result identified is The Madonna and Child, an oil on panel that sold for EUR 106,550 (about USD 130,000, against an estimate of EUR 30,000 to 40,000) at Dorotheum's Old Master Paintings I sale in Vienna on 8 June 2021. Broader market databases reference other, higher figures for paintings attributed to the artist, but without a named work, sale date, or auction house attached, so those figures cannot be verified and are not treated as the record here. Given how few works by Davide come to market, any single result should be read as a data point about a specific painting rather than a trend.

There is no catalogue raisonne for Davide Ghirlandaio and no gallery or estate to consult; verification of any work rests on museum scholarship, provenance research, and connoisseurship, since his own oeuvre has only recently been distinguished from his brother's. The documented auction market is thin and infrequent, anchored by the 2021 Dorotheum sale of The Madonna and Child, and prospective buyers should treat any headline price figures that lack a named work, date, and auction house with caution. Because so much of his surviving output is fixed in place, in altarpieces, mosaics, and frescoes held by museums and churches, the practical market in his work is largely confined to smaller panels and portraits that occasionally surface at Old Master sales.