Francesco Granacci

Francesco Granacci was an Italian Renaissance painter active primarily in his native Florence. Though little-known today, he was regarded in his time and is featured in Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists.
Granacci was born in 1469 in Villamagna, and was trained in Florence in the workshop of Domenico Ghirlandaio, where he became lifelong friends with Michelangelo. The two frequented Lorenzo de' Medici's famous sculpture garden near the convent of San Marco. His earliest works, such as the Madonna and Child with Saints Michael and John the Baptist, Adoration of the Child and his panel from the four histories of Saint John the Baptist show the strong influence of Ghirlandaio as well as Filippino Lippi, who might have been Granacci's first master. According to Vasari, when Granacci was still a youth he modeled for the nude figure in Filippino's Raising of Theophilus in the Brancacci Chapel.
In 1508 Granacci went to Rome, where he and other artists, including Agnolo di Domenico del Mazziere, were asked to help Michelangelo with the Sistine chapel ceiling.