Phillipps, Evelyn March: The frescoes in the Sixtine chapel (London: John Murray, 1901)

40

THE WALL FRESCOES

Me, and I will make you fishers of men.”
St. Peter, clad in the traditional blue and
yellow garments, looks up at his Master,
while Andrew kneels a little behind.
In many of his later works, Ghirlandaio
showed his love for bringing in portraits,
and here he has introduced a number of the
Florentine colony in Rome. The head
which comes sixth in the foremost row on
the right has been recognised as no other
than that of Giovanni Tornabuoni, the rich
uncle of Lorenzo de’ Medici, and treasurer to
Sixtus IV. Tornabuoni, though he had a
beautiful villa in Florence, lived most of the
year in Rome. It was for him that, a few
years later, Ghirlandaio painted the choir of
S. Maria Novella in Florence, there, too,
introducing a number of portraits of the
Tornabuoni family. Very possibly it was
the success of this likeness which decided
his later employment by the Florentine
noble. The boy standing in front of him
with the green doublet is Giovanni’s first-
born son, Lorenzo, the same whom
Botticelli brings in, as an eighteen-year-