This is a Portrait of Giovanna Delgi Albizi by Domenico Ghirlandajo Mezzotint Art Print produced by Doubleday Page and Company Gallery of Masterpieces collection in 1905.
Size of entire piece is approximately 20" x 15" and comes with a title page of similar size. The printed area is approximately 12" x 7.5".
Mezzotint Art print shows edge & corner wear with a minor wear in the border area. There is a small tear of about 1.25" close to the lower center edge. The Title page is on thinner paper and shows small tears along the edges and some wear.
From the Title Page:
Geiovanna Delgi Albizi was the Lorenzo de' Tornbuoni of a distinguished Florintine family. If Art could have painted her manner and her mind no picture on earth could have been more beautiful- such was the sentiment inscribed by the painter, doubtless with the help of some scholar of the day.
"Ars utinam mores animamque effingere posses Pulchrior in terris nulla tabella foret"
Domenico Gilandajo Ghirlandajo was born at Florence in 1449. He Painted this picture in the fulness of his prowess in 1488, the very year on which (on April 1st) the youthful Michelangelo was bound apprentice to him. It is possible that one of the pupil's earliest tasks was to grind the very colors used in this portrait. The Tornabuoni were Ghirlandajo's best patrons. A few years before, Giovanni Tornabuoni employed him to paint the choir of santa maria Novella in Florence, with the famous series of frescoes which all the modern traveling world goes to see. They represent incidents on the legends od St. John Baptist and the Madonna, but in fact depict as it were tableaux vivant acted by members of leading Florentine families in the parts of personages in the sacred history, Among them Giovanna Degli Albizi finds a place, a stately full-legnth figure in profile moving to the left. In pose, aspect, and costume she is the same as in the panel picture here reproduced. But this latter is far more finely finished, intended to be looked at from a nearer point of view, and to decorate the walls, not of a church bit of a chamber. Many portraits are ascribed to Ghirlandajo, but few of them were really painted by him. Od those few this is beyond question the finest. Its former owner, Mr Willett, lent it to the London National Gallery for Some Years, and only the lack of enterprise of the authorities of that institution allowed it to slip through their fingers into the finest private gallery in France.
The Remarkable quality of the work is easily recognizable by the eye, but not easily translated into words. Perhaps we may describe the style as heraldic. There is a stern refusal of every quality that is not monumental. The decorations on the garments are like those of a shield, formal, severe, almost architectural. Note the reserved simplicity of the background, the insistence on rectangular outlines. Observe the sculpturesque modeling of the hair, the mathematical accuracy of the pose, the absolute profile.. The modeling of the face is the modeling of a marvel medallion. The whole is in fact equivalent to a picture of a colored bas-relief. Work so severe and so restrained sacrifices much, but wins in compensation a most noble dignity, like in kind to that attained by the Greek masters of sculpture. Not everyone will feel the charm of such art, but those who do feel it will find in it an enduring satisfaction, which they would not willingly exchange for any number of impressionist triumphs.
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