Juan Fernández de Navarrete, called El Mudo

As his sobriquet suggests, 'El Mudo', the Spanish Mannerist painter, was deaf and dumb, following a childhood illness. He initially studied at the Hieronymite monastery in Logroño, before travelling to Italy as early as 1550. He visited Rome, Florence, Milan and Naples but it was in Venice where he settled and worked under Titian for several years. He was recalled to Spain by Philip II to work at the Escorial, initially repairing works by Titian in 1566, before being named an official court painter in 1568. Having travelled widely in Spain, in 1576 he was commissioned to paint a series of thirty-two canvases to decorate the altarpieces of the basilica of the Escorial and in 1579 he was commissioned to paint the high altar, though he died after completing only eight of the altarpieces.