page_title: Tornabuoni Chapel
section_title: Birth of the Baptist
hierarchical_section_title: Tornabuoni Chapel / Scenes from the life of St. John the Baptist / Birth of the Baptist
caption_attribution_description: cappella tornabuoni frescoes in florence
context_page_description: The Tornabuoni Chapel is the main chapel in the church of Santa Maria Novella, Florence, Italy. It is famous for the extensive and well-preserved fresco cycle on its walls, one of the most complete in the city, which was created by Domenico Ghirlandaio and his workshop between 1485 and 1490.
context_section_description: This scene is linked with that in the opposite wall, the Birth of the Virgin, with which it shares an element of composition having the bed placed symmetrically. This room is less luxurious than the other, but still probably portrays that of a rich Florentine merchant of the time.
  The light falls heavily on the figures in the foreground, while the others are partially in shade. Elizabeth is depicted on the bed in a calm and majestic posture, with a book in her left hand.  As in the other scene, there are two nurses painted with brilliant colours to attract the watcher's attention. Three women, also in the foreground, are visiting Elizabeth. The first, luxuriously dressed, could be a relative of the Tornabuoni. Of the two other figures, the older is most likely Lucrezia Tornabuoni, Giovanni's sister, who had recently died. The maid entering from the right with a basket of fruit on her head resembles both one of the nymphs of Botticelli's Primavera and the Salome painted by Filippino Lippi in the Prato Cathedral. In a preparatory drawing now in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin the maid is in fact Salome carrying the Baptist's head.
  Notable is the attention to domestic detail, which shows again the influence on Ghirlandaio of the Netherlandish school, which was being felt in Tuscany during this period: the two bottles of wine and water held by the maid, the bed-frame with a vase and the two pomegranates over the bed.
caption: Zechariah Writes John's Name
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