Giunta Pisano

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Giunta Pisano (also named Giunta da Pisa or Giunta Capitini) was an Italian painter, he is the earliest Italian painter whose name is found inscribed on an extant work.

He is said to have exercised his art from 1202 to 1236. He may perhaps have been born towards 1180 in Pisa, and died in or soon after 1236; but other accounts give 1202 as the date of his birth, and the more probable date of 1258 or thereabouts for his death. There is some ground for thinking that his family name was Capiteno.

Giunta Pisano was in the practice of painting upon cloth stretched on wood, and prepared with plaster.

The inscribed work above referred to, one of his earliest, is a Crucifix, long in the kitchen. of the convent of St Anne in Pisa. Other Pisan works of like date (as in San Matteo in Pisa) are very barbarous, and, some of them may be also from the hand of Giunta.

It is said that he painted in the upper church of Assisi, in especial a Crucifixion dated 1236, with a figure of Father Elias, the general of the Franciscans, embracing the foot of the cross. These frescos in Byzantine style, were probabably made in collaboration with Greek artists. In the sacristy is a portrait of St Francis, also ascribed to Giunta; but it more probably belongs to the close of the 13th century.

His masterpiece is the imposing Crucifix (1250) in the left transept of Basilica of Saint Dominic in Bologna, with the writing in Latin "Cuius docta manus me pixit Junta Pisanus" (painted by the hand of Giunta Pisano). It is still much influenced by the Byzantine style and represents one of the best examples of 13th-century Italian painting.

These crucifixes show that he initiated a new way of representing Christ, substituting the traditional image of dying Christ in agony. This new depiction, mostly found in Slavonic Europe in direct contact with Byzantium, was soon to be followed in Italy. This representation of Christ, and especially the crucifix in Basilica of Saint Dominic in Bologna, has much influenced Cimabue, who would continue on this style and develop his own more emotional style (as seen in his Crucifix in Basilica di Santa Croce, Florence).

[edit] References

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
• Benezit E., Dictionnaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs et Graveurs, 10 tomes; Librarie Gründ, Paris 1976; ISBN 2-7000-0153-2 (in French)