1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Giunta Pisano

GIUNTA PISANO, the earliest Italian painter whose name is found inscribed on an extant work. 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 1236; but other accounts give 1202 as the date of his birth, and 1258 or thereabouts for his death. There is some ground for thinking that his family name was Capiteno. The inscribed work above referred to, one of his earliest, is a “Crucifix,” long in the kitchen of the convent of St Anne in Pisa. Other Pisan works of like date are very barbarous, and some of them may be also from the hand of Giunta. It is said that he painted in the upper church of Assisi,—in especial a “Crucifixion” dated 1236, with a figure of Father Elias, the general of the Franciscans, embracing the foot of the cross. 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. He was in the practice of painting upon cloth stretched on wood, and prepared with plaster.