Biography

Giunta Pisano was, with Berlinghiero, one of the earliest Italian painters known to us as individuals. He is known from three surviving crucifixes in Assisi, Pisa and Bologna. He is also known to have painted a crucifix in Assisi, dated 1236 but now lost, and he may have painted the dramatic St Francis (Pisa). His style is more consciously realistic than that of Berlinghiero and In these paintings Christ is represented with his head leaning on one side with an expression of pain and his body bending forward in agony - conception (Christus patiens type of crucifix) differing from "the triumphant Christ" of the preceding age.