Attributed to Pieter Candid

Attributed to PIETER CANDID (Bruges, 1548-Munich, 1628).
"Virgin of the Annunciation".
Oil on canvas. Relined from the 19th century.
Attached is a report by Ignacio González Panicello making the attribution of the work.
It has a frame from the early twentieth century.
Measurements: 94 x 79 cm; 116 x 101 cm (frame).
An indeterminate background makes us focus our attention on the figure, located in the foreground, as befits this theme following the approaches that emerged at the Council of Trent. Mary, dressed in a red tunic, blue mantle and white veil covering her hair, appears seated before a lectern with a book. One of the features that make the piece a unique painting is the lack of the presence of the archangel Gabriel, so that the artist emphasizes the importance of the Virgin as the protagonist of the scene and of the history of the Christian religion. The Annunciation is one of the most represented themes in Christian art for marking the Incarnation of Christ as man and as God, with Mary maintaining her purity and her virginal state, points of great theological importance. Thus, throughout the evolution of the different styles in European art, there is a great variety of models and different details according to style, school and period. The present work is clearly related to Baroque works because of the palette chosen, the iconography (with details maintained from earlier traditions), the hallmarks of light, etc.
Aesthetically the work is related to the painting of Pieter Candid, a painter, tapestry designer and Mannerist draughtsman born in Flanders and active in Italy and Bavaria. He was an artist at the Medici court in Florence and at the Bavarian court of Duke Wilhelm V and his successor Maximilian I in Munich. Peter began his apprenticeship in Italy in the early 1560s under the guidance of an unknown master. The earliest known record of Candid's work as an artist relates to payment for a fresco executed in Florence in 1569. He is first mentioned as a member of the "Accademia delle Arti del Disegno" in 1576. The Accademia delle Arti del Disegno was a prestigious academy of artists in Florence whose members included Michelangelo Buonarroti, Lazzaro Donati, Agnolo Bronzino, Benvenuto Cellini and others. In 1586 he was called to the ducal court of Munich on the recommendation of the sculptor Giambologna, another Flemish artist working in Italy, with whom Candid had a close relationship. He was first court painter to Duke William V of Bavaria and later to Maximilian I of Bavaria. In the period between 1600 and 1628 he was the most important artist in Munich. He also worked as an art dealer and maintained business relations with Philipp Hainhofer, an Augsburg merchant, banker, diplomat and art collector remembered, among other things, for his cabinets of curiosities. Peter Candid was an extremely versatile artist who was not only a painter, but also a designer of tapestries, prints and sculptures. His pictorial work ranged from history paintings, portraits, mythological scenes and allegories to large altarpieces and complex decorative projects. He was an oil and fresco painter. He is credited with introducing Italian fresco painting as the preferred medium in Bavaria. The iconography he developed was influential well into the 18th century.