CAPORALI, GIOVANNI BATTISTA, also known as Bitti. — Son of Bartolomeo, born in Perugia c. 1476 and died in 1560. A man of letters, architect, painter, and miniaturist, he is remembered for a commentary on Vitruvius, while very little of his pictorial work remains certain.
Initially a pupil of his father, he later worked in the workshop of Pinturicchio, assisting him in painting the panel of the Coronation of Umberto (1503, now in the Vatican). Works attributed to him include the fresco of Christ between St. John the Baptist and St. Peter in the church of Cereseto near Panicale (c. 1510) and the panel of the Nativity at Panicale (dated c. 1519), in which, besides the characteristics of the school of Pinturicchio, the painter shows an adherence to the influences of the art of Perugino and Raphael. Later, however, he seems to distance himself from the Umbrian school and instead approach the Roman school headed by Giulio Romano, not without some aspirations to Michelangelo’s grandiloquence (see the frescoes in Villa Passerini near Cortona from 1525, the vault of Santa Maria della Luce in Perugia, roughly from the same period, and the stories of St. Anthony Abbot in the church of the same name in Deruta). A friend of men of letters and artists, he enjoyed good renown in his time and was also mentioned by Vasari.