GIUNTA PISANO

GIUNTA PISANO. — Painter active in the mid-thirteenth century. After the more recent criticism, chiefly through the work of Bacci, excluded the possibility that a Pistoian document of 1 June 1202 and certain Pisan documents dating from 1258 to 1300 referred to him, the only certain references concerning the chronology of this painter are the following:

on 30 January 1229, according to a document in the Diocesan Diplomatic Archive of Pisa, G. quondam Guidocti de Colle purchased from the archbishop of Pisa a house with adjoining land near Calci; in 1236 G. painted a Cross for Friar Elia, now lost, but which until the seventeenth century stood in the Basilica of S. Francesco at Assisi (Wadding, Tronci, and others transmitted the text of the inscription: Frater Elias fieri fecit - Iesus Christe pie - Miserere precantis Helie - Junta pisanus me pinxit A. D. 1236 ind. IX); on 28 January 1241 Iuncta pictor is mentioned as the owner of a house near Calci, and on 28 August 1254 Iuncta Capitinus pictor swore allegiance to the archbishop of Pisa, Federico Visconti. Moreover, three works still preserved bear his signature: the Crucifix in the Basilica of S. Maria degli Angeli at Assisi, whose inscription was completed as follows by Bacci: (IUNTA PISANUS (CAP)ITINI ME FECIT); the Crucifix discovered by Da Morrona in the kitchen of the Monastery of S. Anna in Pisa and now preserved in the church of the SS. Ranieri and Leonardo (or S. Ranierino), simply signed IUNTA PISANUS ME FECIT; and a large Cross painted in the church of S. Domenico in Bologna, bearing the inscription: CUIUS DOCTA MANUS - ME PINXIT JUNTA PISANUS. On the basis of these three signed Crucifixes, other works have been attributed, generally with little agreement, to G. di Guidocti Capitini da Colle (near Calci); among them are a small Cross, painted on both sides, from the monastery of the Vallombrosan Romite nuns of S. Paolo a Ripa d'Arno in Pisa; another small double-sided Cross, formerly in the Gualino collection and later in the Cini collection at Monselice; a Crucifix there; a panel with the Crucifixion in the Harris collection in London; and two small scenes depicting the Flagellation and Mockery of Christ in the Moscow Museum. These latter attributions (of the paintings in London and Moscow) must certainly be rejected, as must also be

The identification proposed by Sirén of Brother Elia’s lost Crocifisso with a Crocifisso in the Museum of Gualdo Tadino is also highly doubtful. But the other attributions, too, must be regarded with great reserve, all the more so because, through the three signed Crocifissi (in Assisi, Pisa, and Bologna), G.’s artistic personality emerges with compelling clarity as that of the greatest Italian painter before Cimabue and Duccio di Duminisegna. Probably formed within the orbit of the Luccan Berlinghiero, G. was a highly original interpreter of the refined Byzantine neo-Hellenism that spread throughout the peninsula after the fall of Constantinople, above all through Pisa, which was so closely connected with the East by its trade and political relations. G.’s style is distinguished by the dynamic intensity of its draughtsmanship, in which the abstraction of Byzantine forms is brought to life by a play of chiaroscuro that seems to herald a search for plastic values; but above all, the artist’s greatness lies in the powerful and bitter tragedy of his figures, among the most poignant in the whole of the Italian Middle Ages. G.’s influence on contemporary painting was immense, both in Umbria, where the exquisite “master of S. Francesco” derived from him, and in Emilia and Pisa itself, where he had various followers. — Vedi tav. LVI.