Pieter de Witte: a 16th-century painter who worked in Volterra and Munich

An artist who recently seems to have been forgotten by art critics, Pieter de Witte, known in Italy as Pietro Candido, was one of the greatest Flemish painters from the 16th century. The official painter for the Dukes of Bavaria, Pietro Candido worked in the cities of Florence, Volterra and Munich, Germany. Although most of his extant artworks were destroyed in the bombardments of WWII, he remains one of the art world’s greatest talents.Born in Brugge-Bruges in circa 1548, Pietro Candido moved to Florence with his family at four years of age, where his father was called to collaborate with tapestry-maker Jan Rost, who worked for the Medici family at the time. Candido went through important art training in Florence and carried out his apprenticeship under Giambologna. Historical archives demonstrate two other important artists, who were likely Candido’s brothers, were also active in Florence at the time: the first was Elia di Pietro Candido, who made a small bronze, dated 1573, depicting Borea for Francesco de' Medici’s study in Palazzo Vecchio; and the second was Cornelius De Witte, or Candido, who was a soldier in the guard of the Grand Duchy, as well as a celebrated landscape painter.

Candido was admitted to Florence’s Academy of Design in 1576, and he spent a period of time in Volterra, where he painted three large altarpieces: one for the cathedral in 1578; and two others in the 1580s, one of which was for the Badia di San Giusto and Clemente.He returned to Florence in 1583 after a brief period in Rome, and in 1585 he painted a fresco, a “Madonna with Child among the Saints Niccolò and Girolamo” in a lunette that is above the entranceway of the San Niccolò del Ceppo Oratory. In 1586, he painted a portrait of Giuliano de' Medici, which was commissioned by the Medici family and displayed in the first corridor of the then new Uffizi Gallery. On July 26, 1586 he was in Munich, at the court of Duke Guglielmo V.Pietro Candido spent 42 years in Munich at the court of Guglielmo V and then, from 1602 to 1628, at the court of Maximilian I. At the court of the Wittelsbach he proved his worth and talent as a varied artist: he made everything from wall decorations to tapestries to sculptures, portraits and monumental altarpieces for local churches.