Justus of Ghent, Joos van Wassenhove, called

JUSTUS OF GHENT, Joos van Wassenhove, Called. - Painter b. between 1435 and 1440 either at Antwerp or at Ghent; in 1460 he was received into the Guild of St. Luke of Antwerp and on 6 Oct. 1464 into the Corporation of Painters of Ghent; other documents attest to his presence at Ghent in 1464 and in 1468. Before 1474 Joos set out for Rome, as appears from a document in the parish archive of St. Michael's at Ghent.

The name of G. appears for the first time at Urbino in a document of 12 Feb. 1473. The last notice of him is of 25 Oct. 1475: it concerns payments for the Communion of the Apostles of the ducal Palace of Urbino. The evident points of contact between this work and the images of the Fathers of the Church and of illustrious personages and the allegorical figures of the liberal arts that decorated the study of Duke Federico in the Palace of Urbino, today partly at Urbino, partly in the Louvre, in the National Gallery of London and in the Kaiser

Friedrich Museum of Berlin, support the attribution of these works to G., even though here one notes greater sweetness and modulation than in the Communion. Moreover Vespasiano da Bisticci, librarian of Duke Federico, speaks, for the decoration of the study, of a Flemish painter expressly summoned to Urbino. Probably, however, in those paintings there was the collaboration of another artist who could be the Castilian Pedro Ilerruguete, a collaboration evident especially in the panels of the Museum of Berlin. In any case Giusto belongs to the company of northern masters who, having come down to Italy during the 15th century, despite the diversity of their expressive language contribute to the definition of some particular aspect of our Renaissance, influencing the artists of the milieu in which they found themselves working.

Serena Madonna Setti