(b Ghent, c. 1503; d Ghent, after 4 Feb 1578). Flemish painter and designer of stained glass and book illustrations. His dates can be deduced from several amendments to his will. Archives reveal that he was fined during the heretics’ trial of 1528 because of his Reformist sympathies. In 1538–9 he was paid for painting the blazon of the Ghent rhetoricians’ chamber ‘De Fonteyne’ for the rhetoricians’ festival of 1539. Van Mander called him a good painter, particularly skilled in the depiction of architecture and perspective, and he mentioned a painting of the Woman Taken in Adultery (untraced) and designs for windows in St Bavo’s, Ghent. De Witte’s work is now known only through his designs for book illustrations. The most important publication is Willem van Branteghem’s Iesu Christi vita (Antwerp, 1537) published by Matthias Crom, also in a Dutch and French version. The book contains a Latin acrostic on LEVINUS DE VVITTE GANDENSIS, written by Joris Cassander, which awards special praise to de Witte. It includes 186 woodcuts and numerous vignettes, in a highly characteristic style, full of picturesque and narrative detail. The woodcuts were reprinted and copied many times as illustrations to the Bible, and they also influenced the work of other artists such as Maarten van Heemskerck. De Witte also designed book illustrations for the Ghent printer Joos Lambrecht ( fl c. 1536–56), for instance for Andries van der Meulen’s Een zuverlic boucxkin vander ketyvigheyt der menschelicker naturen (‘A fine tract on the misery of the condition of man’; 1543) and Cornelis van der Heyden’s Corte instruccye ende onderwijs (‘Brief instruction and education’; 1545).