An Old Man and his Grandson

An Old Man and his Grandson is a tempera on poplar panel painting from around 1490 by the Italian Renaissance artist Domenico Ghirlandaio, now in the Louvre in Paris. It shows an older man in a red robe embracing a young child, also dressed in red, seated indoors against a dark background with a landscape visible through a window behind them. Neither sitter is identified, though their fine clothing suggests noble status, and the art historian Bernard Berenson called it one of the most human pictures in the entire range of Quattrocento painting. Ghirlandaio depicts the man's facial deformity with sympathy rather than the judgment common to the era's physiognomic theories, and the child's hand resting on the man's chest gives the scene a tenderness beyond typical dynastic portraiture; the painting entered the Louvre in 1880 and was restored in 1996. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/