The Madonna and Child with Sts. Louis of...

Davide Ghirlandaio painted this Madonna and Child with saints around 1486. Working alongside his brother Domenico in the family workshop, Davide produced altarpieces for churches in Florence and its territories. The Ghirlandaio workshop was the most commercially successful artistic enterprise in late fifteenth-century Florence. The oil medium allowed for rich tonal transitions and glazed layers of color that created luminous depth impossible with the older tempera technique. Such devotional panels served both liturgical contexts in churches and chapels and private devotional use in the homes of wealthy families who maintained personal altars and oratories.

Tempera on panel with the clear drawing and bright palette characteristic of the Ghirlandaio workshop. The sacra conversazione follows the standard compositional format established by Domenico's more accomplished works.