Here’s an interesting figure painted by the 15th century Italian artist Domenico Ghirlandaio. It represents two people and appears in one of a series of frescoes depicting the life of John the Baptist displayed in the Tornabuoni Chapel in the Church of Santa Maria Novella, Florence.

At surface level the figure represents Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, in the process of naming his new-born son. But Ghirlandaio also embedded another narrative in the scene centred on Leonardo da Vinci and presents the artist in the process of drawing and making a study of Fioretta Gorini representing the Virgin Mary and her Child.

The composition is inspired by a fresco in the Sistine Chapel, the Testimony and Death of Moses painted in 1481-82, while the commission for the Tornabuoni Chapel paintings was carried out between 1486-90.

• More on this in a future post.