3-085-910 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Newly found fresco by Ghirlandajo discovered in the Church of the Ognissanti, Florence, 1898. 'Father of Amerigo; Amerigo Vespucci; Mother of Amerigo...the Church of the Ognissanti...has held hidden treasure in the form of a fresco placed there, some four centuries ago, by the...hand of Ghirlandajo. This discovery has an international interest other than merely artistic, for the fresco presents to us Amerigo Vespucci, the Florentine merchant, who accompanied Ojeda on his voyage to the Eastern coast in 1498, and described it in letters to his family at home. He is charged with what is sometimes set down to him as an act of presumption - the insertion of "Tierra de Amerigo" in his maps. Anyhow, his name clings to the land which was to owe to Columbus its more formal discovery. There is nothing presumptuous about the manner of Amerigo in the newly uncovered fresco. He and his father and his uncle - a Dominican and a friend of Savonarola - and other male relatives, appear in one group; and in another the women of the family...These kneel on a platform, and in the midst of them...stands a figure of the Virgin, who extends her arms in blessing over all the devout group'. From "Illustrated London News", 1898.