Selvaggia Sassetti (born 1470)

Davide Ghirlandaio, who was Domenico's younger brother and principal workshop assistant, continuing the family workshop after Domenico's death in 1494, created this work around 1487, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This work reflects the artistic culture of Florence during the Early Renaissance, when painters were forging new approaches to representation through the study of perspective, anatomy, and natural light. This work belongs to the Early Renaissance, the transformative period in European art when painters first applied mathematical perspective, naturalistic figure modeling, and archaeological interest in antiquity to the inherited traditions of medieval devotional painting.

The painting reveals skilled handling of tempera medium in the graduated modeling of drapery and flesh tones, with the balanced composition and clear spatial organization typical of established Italian workshop methods.