Giunta Pisano

The recorded working language is Italian. The field of work recorded is painting. Works named in the authority record are Crucifixion of Saint Ranieri and Crucifix San Domenico Bologna. Work by Giunta Pisano is recorded in the collections of Städel Museum, National Museum of San Matteo, Museo della Porziuncola, Pinacoteca Vaticana and Treasure Museum of the basilica of Saint Francis in Assisi.

He is said to have exercised his art from 1202 to 1236. He may perhaps have been born towards 1180 in Pisa, and died in or soon after 1250, but other accounts give 1202 as the date of his birth, and the more probable date of 1258 or thereabouts for his death. There is some ground for thinking that his family name was Capiteno or Capitino. Giunta Pisano usually painted upon cloth stretched on wood and prepared with plaster. The inscribed work, referred to above, is also one of his earliest. It is the Crocefisso di San Raniero, a crucifix, that hung for a long time in the kitchen of the convent of St Anne in Pisa. Other Pisan works of about the same date (as the one in National Museum of San Matteo, Pisa) are very barbarous, and, some of them may be also from the hand of Giunta Pisano before he had achieved his virtuosity (such as S. Benedetto Crucifixion). A painting of a crucifixion (1236) for the High Altar of the upper church of Assisi no longer exists, but there exists an 18th-century engraving based on a copy of this portrait In the sacristy is a portrait of St Francis, also ascribed to Giunta; but it more probably belongs to the close of the 13th century. His masterpiece is the imposing Crucifix (1250) in the left transept of Basilica of Saint Dominic in Bologna, with the writing in Latin "Cuius docta manus me pixit Junta Pisanus" (painted by the learned or skilled hand of Giunta Pisano). It is still much influenced by the Byzantine style and represents one of the best examples of 13th-century Italian painting.