Painter, who became a member of the painters' guild in Antwerp in 1460, and in 1464 was a master in Ghent. During the mid-1470s he is recorded as being at the court of Federigo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, where he painted his only surviving documented work, The Institution of the Eucharist (14724). He is also thought to have painted a series of 28 Famous Men for the Ducal Palace (c.1476). His work was an important source of knowledge of the Netherlandish oil technique for contemporary Italian painters.
The public records of the city of Ghent have been diligently searched, but in vain, for a clue to the history of Justus or Jodocus, whom Vasari and Guicciardini called Giusto da Guanto. But none of the works of these masters has been preserved, and it is impossible to compare their style with that of Giusto.
Between 1465 and 1474, this artist executed the Communion of the Apostles which Vasari has described, and modern critics now see to the best advantage in the museum of Urbino. It was painted for the brotherhood of Corpus Christi at the bidding of Frederick of Montefeltro, who was introduced into the picture as the companion of Caterino Zeno, a Persian envoy at that time on a mission to the court of Urbino. From this curious production it may be seen that Giusto, far from being a pupil of Hubert Van Eyck, was merely a disciple of a later and less gifted master, who took to Italy some of the peculiarities of his native schools, and forthwith commingled them with those of his adopted country.
As a composer and draughtsman Giusto compares unfavourably with the better-known painters of Flanders; Vespasian, a Florentine bookseller who contributed much to form the antiquarian taste of Frederick of Montefeltro, states that this duke sent to the Netherlands for a capable artist to paint a series of ancient worthies for a library recently erected in the palace of Urbino. Still, it is possible that Giusto should have been able, after a certain time, to temper his Flemish style by studying the masterpieces of Santi and Melozzo, and so to acquire the mixed manner of the Flemings and Italians which these portraits of worthies display. There is no ground for presuming that Giusto da Guanto is identical with Justus d'Allamagna who painted the Annunciation (1451) in the cloisters of Santa Maria di Castello at Genoa. The drawing and coloring of this wall painting shows that Justus d'Allamagna was as surely a native of south Germany as his homonym at Urbino was a born Netherlander.
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