GIUSTO di GAND, JOOS VAN WASSENHOVE, so called. — Painter born between 1435 and 1440 either in Antwerp or in Ghent; in 1460 he was admitted to the Guild of St. Luke of Antwerp and on 6 October 1464 to the Corporation of Painters of Ghent. Other documents attest to his presence in Ghent in 1464 and 1468. Before 1474 Joos set out for Rome, as appears from a document in the parish archive of St. Michael of Ghent.
G.’s name appears for the first time in Urbino in a document dated 12 February 1473. The last record concerning him is dated 25 October 1475: it concerns payments for the Communion of the Apostles in the Ducal Palace of Urbino. The evident points of contact between this work and the images of the Church Fathers, illustrious figures, and allegorical figures of the liberal arts that decorated the study of Duke Federico in the Palace of Urbino—today found partly in Urbino, partly in the Louvre, in the National Gallery in London, and in the Kaiser
Friedrich Museum in Berlin—support the attribution of these works to G., even though here one observes greater delicacy and modulation than in the Communion. Moreover, Vespasiano da Bisticci, Duke Federico’s librarian, speaks, with regard to the decoration of the study, of a Flemish painter expressly summoned to Urbino. Probably, however, another artist also collaborated in those paintings; he may have been the Castilian Pedro Ilerruguete, whose collaboration is especially evident in the panels in the Berlin Museum. In any case, Giusto belongs to the group of northern masters who, having come to Italy during the fifteenth century, despite the diversity of their expressive language, contributed to defining certain particular aspects of our Renaissance by influencing the artists in the milieu in which they found themselves working.