GIOVANNI D'ALEMAGNA. – Painter of Germanic origin; the only information available about him concerns his residence in Venice, where he is first mentioned in 1441, and in Padua, where he stayed from 1447 onward and died in 1450. His artistic activity was carried out exclusively in collaboration with the Murano-born Antonio Vivarini, and numerous works of it have survived: a polyptych of 1441 formerly in S. Stefano in Venice (Vienna Museum); also in Venice, the three altarpieces of the chapel of S. Tarasio in S. Zaccaria (1443–44), the Coronation of the Virgin in S. Pantaleone (1444), and the Madonna and Saints of the Scuola della carità (1446, now in the Accademia); in Padua, a polyptych of 1447 formerly in S. Francesco (castle of Konopiste in Bohemia) and the decoration of the vault of the Ovetari Chapel at the Eremitani (now destroyed).
In the absence of works certainly attributable to G. alone, determining his style presents a fascinating and still unresolved problem. The most plausible hypothesis is that, in the collaborative works, the parts in which an essentially decorative spirit prevails, of somewhat archaic taste and with strong affinities to the International Gothic style, are his. On the basis of this criterion, a homogeneous group of paintings initially considered the work of Vivarini alone has been attributed to G.; it includes the richly detailed Adoration of the Magi in the Berlin Museum, the Crucifix with scenes from the Passion in the Ca' d'oro in Venice, a Crucifixion at Konopiste, and others. Current criticism, however, tends to remove from G. certain works, such as the Madonna in the church of the Filippini in Padua and that in the Poldi Pezzoli Museum in Milan, which had initially been attributed predominantly to him.