NAVARRETE, Juan Fernandez, surnamed El Mudo ("the Mute"), an eminent Spanish painter, was born at Logroño in Castile in 1526. In early infancy an attack of disease quenched entirely his sense of hearing, and consequently left him without the faculty of acquiring speech. But the quick and intelligent boy soon contrived to express his wants by sketching objects with a piece of charcoal. The practice thus begun as a necessity was soon prosecuted as an art. He was placed under the tuition of Fray Vicente de Santo Domingo, a monkish painter, at Estrella. Meanwhile the rest of his training was not neglected. He learned to read and write, became well versed in history, both sacred and profane, and acquired a remarkable skill in expressing his ideas by signs. His ready talents also soon exhausted all the lessons in art that his master could give him, and he repaired to Italy to finish his studies there. He visited Florence, Rome, Naples, and Milan; and, according to the ordinary account, sat for a considerable time in the school of Titian at Venice. But it was long before the labours of the poor dumb artist attracted much notice. At length, in 1568, the Spanish king, Philip II., summoned him to Madrid, conferred upon him the title of royal painter and a salary of 200 ducats a year, and employed him to execute
pictures for the Escorial. The peculiar style of El Mudo now developed itself. His pencil exhibited a striking boldness and freedom in design, and his rich, warm colouring acquired for him the surname of "the Spanish Titian." These qualities were well exemplified in "The Assumption," "The Martyrdom of St James the Great," "St Philip," and a "Repenting St Jerome," all of which he had executed by 1571. During the next four years he was engaged in painting "The Nativity," "The Scourging of Christ," and "The Holy Family." A life-like yet somewhat incongruous feature in the last of these was the representation of a cat and a dog in the foreground showing fight over a bone. His great work, "Abraham receiving the Three Angels," followed in 1576. The two remaining years of his life were spent in painting for the chapel of the Escorial eight altar-pieces, which still excite the admiration of visitors by their noble figures and their full and warmly-coloured draperies. El Mudo died at Toledo in February 1579. (See Stirling's Annals of the Artists of Spain, in 3 vols., London, 1848.)