Background
Pisano was probably born in 1180 in Pisa, Italy. There is some ground for thinking that his family name was Capiteno or Capitino.
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Giunta Pisano
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also known as
Giunta da Pisa, Giunta Capitini
Career
Giunta Pisano usually painted upon cloth stretched on wood, and prepared with plaster. The inscribed work, referred above, is also one of his earliest. It is the Crocefisso di San Raniero, a crucifix, that hung a long time in the kitchen of the convent of St Anne in Pisa. Other Pisan works of about the same date 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. These crucifixes show that he initiated a new way of representing Christ, eventually substituting once and for all the traditional Byzantine image of Jesus serene though crucified (Christus gloriosus) with a Christ dying in agony (Christus patiens). He died in c. 1260.
