Pieter de Witte detto Pietro il Candido (Bruges... Lot n° 214

oil on canvas, 275x182 cm dated 1585 on the base of the coffee table, The canvas, of considerable size and great impact, certainly appears the result of a cultured and sophisticated painting. Dated 1585, it is fully in tune with the intellectual climate of the late sixteenth century and the refined formulas of late Mannerism, settling with a certain ease in the catalogue of the Flemish, naturalized Italian, Peter de Witte, better known as Pietro Candido. Growing up in the capital of the Medici Grand Duchy where he had moved with his father, a tapestry maker, Pietro di Elia de Witte, Pietro Candido made his debut in Volterra in 1578 with the altarpiece, signed and dated, painted for the cathedral on commission of the Florentine captain Francesco Giorgi. The work, an example of precocious eclecticism, already shows those qualities of careful and imaginative assimilator that will characterize the entire production, well evident also in our exemplar. In 1582 Candido reached Rome, according to Van Mander's testimony, in the company of Vasari, who worked alongside him on the Vatican building site of the Sala Regia and then, returning to Florence the following year, on the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore. Although we have not received documentary evidence to confirm this collaboration, it is certain that the Arezzo area had to exert great fascination on our artist and imprint itself like a brand on his imagination. In the painting in question, San Paolo, framed within a semicircular niche, stands out triumphantly against an architectural backdrop that acquires depth thanks to the chessboard flooring. On the left, behind an elegant savonarola, stands out the unfailing attribute of the sword which recalls the antecedent of his persecutory activity before his miraculous conversion on the road to Damascus. On the opposite side, a low table stands on a refined golden base in the shape of a winged stylophor figure. The saint is draped in his traditional colours, green and red, a