GIUNTA PI-SANO. - Painter active around the mid-13th century. After recent criticism, particularly through the work of Bacci, has excluded the possibility that a Pistoian document of 1 June 1202 and some Pisan documents from 1258 to 1300 refer to him, the only reliable references regarding the chronology of this painter are the following:
On 30 January 1229, according to a document from the Archiepiscopal Diplomatic Archive of Pisa, *G. quondam Guidotti de Colle* purchased from the Archbishop of Pisa a house with attached land near Calci; in 1236 G. painted a *Crucifix* for Friar Elias, now lost but which until the 17th century stood in the Basilica of S. Francesco in Assisi (Wadding, Tronci, and others have preserved the text of its inscription: *Frater Elias fieri fecit - Jesus Christe pite - Miserere precantis Helie - Iunita pisanus me pinxit A. D. 1236 ind. IX*); on 28 January 1241 *Iunita pictor* is recorded as the owner of a house near Calci, and on 28 August 1254 *Iunita Capitibus pictor* swore fidelity to the Archbishop of Pisa, Federico Visconti. Furthermore, three surviving works bear his signature: the *Crucifix* in the Basilica of S. Maria degli Angeli in Assisi, whose inscription was completed by Bacci as follows: (Iu)nta Pisanus (Cap)itani me fe (cit); the *Crucifix* discovered by Da Morrona in the kitchen of the Monastery of S. Anna in Pisa and now preserved in the church of SS. Ranieri and Leonardo (or S. Ranierino), simply signed *Iunita Pisanus me fecit*; and a large painted *Crucifix* in the church of S. Domenico in Bologna, bearing the inscription: *Cuius docta manus - me pinxit Juntia Pisanus*.
Based on these three signed *Crucifixes*, other works have generally been attributed—though with little consensus—to G. di Guidotto Capitini of Colle (near Calci); among them are a small *Crucifix*, painted on both sides, from the Vallombrosan monastery of S. Paolo a Ripa d’Arno in Pisa; another small double-sided *Crucifix* formerly in the Gualino collection and later in the Cini collection in Monselice; a *Crucifix* in Viterbo; a panel with the *Crucifix* from Pisa in the Harris collection in London; and two small scenes depicting the *Flagellation and the Mocking of Christ* in the Museum of Moscow. These last attributions (of the London and Moscow paintings) are certainly to be rejected, as is the identification proposed by Sirène of the lost *Crucifix* of Friar Elias with a *Crucifix* in the Museum of Gualdo Tadino. However, the other attributions must also be viewed with considerable caution, especially since the three signed *Crucifixes* (from Assisi, Pisa, and Bologna) clearly define G.’s artistic personality as that of the greatest Italian painter before Cimabue and Duccio di Buoninsegna.
Probably trained in the circle of the Lucchese Berlinghiero, G. was an original interpreter of refined Byzantine neo-Hellenism, which spread across the peninsula after the fall of Constantinople, particularly through Pisa, so closely linked to the East by its commerce and political relations. His style is distinguished by the dynamic intensity of his drawing, in which the abstraction of Byzantine formulas is enlivened by a play of chiaroscuro that seems to anticipate a search for plastic values; but above all, the greatness of the artist lies in the powerful and bitter tragic quality of his figures, among the most poignant in all of Italian medieval art. G.’s influence on contemporary painting was immense, both in Umbria, where the exquisite “Master of S. Francesco” derives from him, and in Emilia and Pisa itself, where he had various followers.
— See plate LVI.