CAPANNA, Puccio
Italian painter. Vasari described him as one of Giotto’s most important pupils, but he identified him with the painter Puccio di Simone who is documented in Florence, although he included among the works attributed to this artist numerous paintings in Assisi and noted that the inhabitants of Assisi considered him to be a fellow citizen. A document of 1341, however, confirms the existence of an Assisi painter named Puccio di Capanna: the authorities commissioned ‘Puccius Cappanej et Cecce Saraceni, pictores de Assisio’ to paint images of the Virgin and Child with Saints on the ‘Porta externa platee nove’ and the ‘Porta Sancti Ruphini’. Puccio Capanna is also documented in Assisi in 1347. He died in Assisi from the plague in 1348.
Along with the Florentine Maso di Banco, he was Giotto’s main heir as well as the leading exponent of the manner that was the greatest innovation in Italian painting of the second quarter of the fourteenth century.
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