Giovanni Di Pietro

? – 1528

Italian painter, called Lo Spagna. He got his nickname because he was born in Spain. The circumstances in which he moved to Italy are unknown. He was first documented in the Florentine workshop of Perugino in 1492, at which point he seems to have been a very young assistant. He is documented in Spello in 1502, and could have worked as an assistant to Pinturicchio there. Lo Spagna received the important commission for the altarpiece of the Coronation of the Virgin for the Observant Franciscans of Santa Maria di Montesanto, Todi in 1507, but does not seem to have started work on it until 1511. Before that date, he had almost certainly completed three panels of the Adoration of the Magi that are very similar to each other. According to Vasari, Lo Spagna worked with Perugino in Perugia, but left the city after Perugino's death (i.e. in 1524) because the other painters there were "so hostile to strangers". The Commune of Spoleto granted citizenship to him in 1516, at which point he had lived in Spoleto for many years. He died in Spoleto in 1528, possibly of the plague, while at work in San Giacomo di Spoleto.

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