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One of Ghirlandaio's major commissions was the series of almost twenty frescoes of the lives of Mary and John the Baptist that fills the Gothic chancel (Cappella Maggiore) of Santa Maria Novella in Florence. Ghirlandaio also designed the chapel's stained-glass windows. The patron was the wealthy Giovanni Tornabuoni, the relative by marriage of the Medici, and Ghirlandaio was under such pressure that he enlisted his whole shop in the undertaking, including possibly a thirteen-year-old apprentice called Michelangelo Buonarroti.
The fresco compositions are framed by a highly decorative Renaissance architecture closely connected with the ideas of the architect Giuliano da Sangallo and full of elaborate detail.
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