Paintings Drawings Sculptures 2016 - Jean Luc Baroni

Peter de Witte, known as Peter Candid
Bruges circa 1548 - 1628 Munich
24
Drapery Study for a Pietà or Lamentation
Pen and brown ink over extensive black chalk, heightened with white, on blue paper. Laid down.
Bears later monogram in black ink: AD.
237 x 143 mm (9 5 /8 x 5 3 /4 in.)
Provenance: Private Collection, Munich.
Trained in the workshop of Giorgio Vasari, Peter Candid
became a quintessential court artist, working for more
than forty years as the chief painter and designer in
Munich. He was born in Bruges but by the age of
about ten had moved to Florence where his weaver
father, Peter de Witte, was given work in the Medici
tapestry factory. The family name was changed to
Candido. Peter Candid is already recorded as painting
frescoes in the church of Santissima Annunziata in
1569 and further biographical information is given
by Karel van Mander I who was attached to the same
circle of Netherlandish artists living in Florence
frequented by Candid. Van Mander describes him
as being proficient in oil as well as fresco and also
able to model in clay. Before 1574, he is said to have
collaborated with Vasari on the decoration for the Sala
Regia in the Vatican and the cupola of the Duomo
in Florence whilst, in addition, making designs for
tapestries for Cosimo I de’Medici. Amongst the most
important works of his early career is the altarpiece
of the Lamentation painted for the Abbey of St. Just
(the Badia di San Giusto) in Volterra which shows that
Candid was closer in spirit to Bronzino and Alessandro
Allori than Vasari and that he allied himself to the
school of Michelangelo. The Lamentation is described
as a masterpiece of his Italian period in the recent
exhibition catalogue dedicated to the artist. 1
Candid’s move to Munich was instigated by a
recommendation to William of Bavaria from the
sculptor Giambologna. He began work there under
the direction of Friedrich Sustris, by then a highly
successful artist who shared Candid’s nationality and
training. Though he painted decorations, Candid’s
main work was in producing altarpieces for William
V and other noble patrons. His colouring was much
admired and his inventions were widely imitated, a
number of compositions being recorded in engravings.
Candid also made drawings to be engraved directly
by Aegedius Sadeler. Sustris died in 1599, soon after
Maximilian I of Bavaria came to power and when the
new duke set up a tapestry factory, Candid was given
the commission for four series of designs to incorporate
about fifty hangings. With his knowledge of weaving
acquired in Florence, Candid was able to transpose
the beautiful colouring of his altarpieces into the
tapestries which are now thought of as being amongst
the best of their kind from the 17 th century. His duties
under Maximilian also included charge of the painted
decorations for the hugely enlarged Residenz; these
were executed on canvas and inserted into the ceilings
above the tapestry-encased walls. In preparation,
Candid is known to have made studies from models
for the main figures and planned all details of the
compositions, in many of which is displayed a love
of realistic detail and landscape painting, an aspect
of work for which he was well-known although no
independent landscape works seem to have survived.
He ran a large workshop for his court projects and
despite ill-health continued to paint altarpieces
(revealing of his Florentine training) and small scale
works on copper as well as acting as an art dealer.
This newly discovered drawing is a preliminary study
for a Pietà or Lamentation, a subject which seems
particularly to have occupied the artist in the mid
1580s. Beautifully wrought and entirely characteristic
of Candid’s densely layered technique it focuses on
the drapery of the seated Madonna. Christ’s body is
outlined as a form balanced on her knees recalling,
of course, the Pietà of Michelangelo in St. Peter’s
(fig.1). Either a second study of the Virgin’s veiled
head or the figure of one of the three Marys is
sketched in behind. The positioning of Christ’s body
would suggest that this work is preliminary to the
two known painted versions of the subject and their
related composition drawings, in all of which, Christ’s
body rests on the ground. In the recent monograph
by Brigitte Volk-Knüttel (2010) these works are dated
to the years 1585/6: an oil on copper 2 (57.5 x 42
cm) now in the Archbishop’s Diocesan Museum in
Breslau, its squared up modello 3 in the Prado, Madrid
and a sheet of studies for the central figures in Berlin
(fig.2) 4 ; the magnificent altarpiece 5 mentioned above
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