Announcement of Death to St Fina

Domenico Ghirlandaio's Announcement of Death to Saint Fina from 1473 is part of the Cappella di Santa Fina in the Collegiata di San Gimignano, one of Ghirlandaio's earliest fresco commissions and a work of exceptional importance in his career. Ghirlandaio received this commission around 1473 — when he was still in his mid-twenties — to paint two frescoes depicting the death and burial of Santa Fina, a thirteenth-century San Gimignano holy woman who had lived her final five years on a plank bed as a penitential act. The vision of Saint Gregory announcing her imminent death is the first of the two scenes, and it shows the young Ghirlandaio already mastering the compositional clarity and portraiture of living patrons within sacred scenes that would characterise his entire career.

As a fresco, Ghirlandaio executes the scene in the traditional Italian buon fresco technique: pigments mixed with water applied to fresh plaster (arriccio) in daily giornate. The architectural setting — Fina's chamber opening onto a view of San Gimignano's towers — is painted with spatial precision characteristic of Ghirlandaio's early architectural interests. The figures are naturalistic and clearly characterised, each face individually described rather than conventionally typed.