LO

SPAGNA (d. –c. 1529)  , the usual designation (due to his Spanish origin) of the Italian painter Giovanni di Pietro, one of the chief followers of Perugino . The famous " Sposalizio "—marriage of Joseph and Mary—in the Caen museum, formerly attributed to Perugino (q.v.), is now credited to Lo Spagna . Nothing whatever is known of his early life, or how he became a member of the Perugian school . There is. a marked absence of individuality about his style, which seems like an imitation of the earliest manner of Raphael and that of Pinturicchio in a weaker and less virile form . The chief of his numerous panel paintings are the " Nativity," in the Vatican, and the " Adoration of the Magi," at Berlin . In 1510 Lo Spagna executed many frescoes at Todi, and in 1512 several other mural paintings in and near Trevi . His most important works were frescoes at Assisi and Spoleto, of which some exist in good preservation . He received the freedom of the city of Spoleto in 1516, as a reward for his work there . Lo Spagna's frescoes reach a much higher standard of merit than his panel pictures . The museum of the Capitol in Rome now possesses a very beautiful series of life-sized fresco figures by him, representing Apollo and the Nine Muses . Lo Spagna was alive in 1528, but he appears to have died before 1530, as in that year a pupil of his named Doni completed a fresco in S . Jacopo, near Spoleto, which Lo Spagna had begun .