Ridolfo was the only one who chose the family profession, and he became
the fourth painter of the name of Ghirlandajo.

Davide was not a perfect artist, although a good mosaicist, as his
works in the cathedrals of Orvieto, Siena, and Florence show, but he
was for many years Ridolfo's only instructor. As the boy grew up
Ridolfo frequented those public schools of art before spoken of, the
Brancacci Chapel, and the study of the cartoons in the Papal Hall. Here
he secured the friendship not only of Granacci and Pier di Cosimo, but
of Raphael himself, with whom he visited Fra Bartolommeo in his
convent.

Raphael permitted Ridolfo to assist him in a Madonna for Siena, and
tried to persuade him to accompany him to Rome; but Ridolfo, like a
true Florentine, declined to go "beyond sight of the Duomo."

His first great picture was done in 1504 for the church of San Gallo.
The subject was _Christ Searing His Cross_. His uncle Benedetto
had laboured on a similar picture, now in the Louvre, but Ridolfo's is
a great improvement on this; the composition is well balanced, full of
force and animation, the weeping figures of the Maries and the
solicitude of S. Veronica are very lifelike, although he has not
entirely abolished his uncle's coarseness in the scowling, low-typed
men. The Christ and the Virgin are, on the contrary, so refined as to
induce the supposition that this force of contrast was intentional; the
landscape is rather hard and crude in tone, the flesh tints smooth, and
the handling similar to that of Credi.

The original is now in Palazzo Antinori, Florence, but a replica, in
which he was assisted by Michele, his favourite pupil and adopted son,