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Giovanni [Nanni] di Pietro (di Giovanni) (ii)
(b c. 1403; fl 1439–68; d before May 1479). Italian painter. He was the brother of VECCHIETTA, who, along with MATTEO DI GIOVANNI, influenced his style. Giovanni di Pietro is first documented in 1452 collaborating with the much younger Matteo in gilding a statue by Jacopo della Quercia for Siena Cathedral. Giovanni and Matteo had a formal partnership and the following year are recorded as sharing living quarters. It is difficult to reconstruct Giovanni’s activities before the period of his partnership with Matteo. In 1439 the Spedale della Scala, Siena, paid a certain ‘Nanni di Pietro’, perhaps Giovanni, for frescoes (destr.) for the ‘Pellegrinaio di mezzo’. Other collaborative projects with Matteo include the decoration (1454) of the organ shutters in Siena Cathedral and, with Matteo and a team of other artists, the decoration (1457) of the chapel of S Bernadino in the same cathedral. In 1463 Giovanni was paid for a tabernacle and a predella painting for the Compagnia di S Ansona (fragments in Esztergom, Mus. Christ.; Merion Station, PA, Barnes Found.; Florence, Uffizi; and London, N.G.). Although the altarpiece is usually attributed entirely to Matteo, Giovanni’s hand can now be recognized in those parts (all Sansepolcro, Mus. Civ.) that once surrounded Piero della Francesca’s Baptism (London, N.G.). Three surviving predella panels with scenes from the Life of the Virgin from another collaborative effort by Matteo and Giovanni, the altarpiece of the Annunciation with SS John the Baptist and Bernardino (Siena, S Pietro Ovile; still largely in situ), are considered Giovanni’s masterpieces. These comprise the Birth of the Virgin (Paris, Louvre), the Virgin Returning to the House of her Parents and the Marriage of the Virgin (both Philadelphia, PA, Mus. A.); a fourth scene, the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple, is lost. As well as the predella scenes, Giovanni is thought to have painted the central Annunciation (copied after Simone Martini) and the pinnacle with the Crucifixion. The two lateral panels of St Bernardino and St John the Baptist, attributed to the so-called Master of the Ovile Annunciation in 1947 by Pope-Hennessy, are probably by Matteo, as are the pinnacles of the half-length saints, St Paul and St Peter.
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