Shop art print and framed art   Portrait d'un vieillard et d'un jeune garçon by Domenico Ghirlandaio

The Portrait of an Old Man and a Young Boy is a painting dating from around 1490 by the Italian Renaissance artist Domenico Ghirlandaio, and is one of his best-known works, remarkable for its emotional intensity. Its realism has been described as unique among Quattrocento portraits. An old man in a red dress is sitting by a window, holding a young child, also dressed in red. They are seated in an interior, lit against a blackened wall. Behind them, to the right, an opening reveals a landscape with rugged terrain and winding roads, typical of Ghirlandaio's early work. Depicted in three-quarter view, the old man, probably a Florentine patrician recognisable by the cappuccio folded over his shoulder, and the boy, elegantly dressed, indicate a noble origin. Despite the traditional assumption that the subjects are grandfather and grandson, their identities are in fact unknown. It is possible that the painting has a commemorative purpose and that the child is a narrative invention intended to highlight the goodness of the man. The intensity of the image is dramatised by the contrast between the old man, his nose deformed by a disease (rhinophyma), and the slim profile and beauty of the child. While the composition is thematically linked to the art of portraiture in the Netherlands, in the mid-fifteenth century, the motif of a portrait in an interior with a landscape seen in the distance was widespread in Italy. The extraordinary feature of the painting is the deformation of the [...]

 

This artwork is a painting from the renaissance period. It belongs to the italian renaissance style.

 

« Portrait d'un vieillard et d'un jeune garçon » is kept at Louvre, Paris, France.

 

Find the full description of Portrait d'un vieillard et d'un jeune garçon by Domenico Ghirlandaio on Wikipedia.