Miguel Navarro Cañizares

Miguel Navarro Cañizares was a Spanish painter and art teacher who worked in Venezuela and Brazil.

He was born to a basket maker in Valencia and attended the Academy of Fine Arts. Later, he moved to Madrid, where he took classes at the San Fernando Academy and found a position in the workshop of Federico de Madrazo. In 1861, he entered a competition to fill a teaching vacancy at the "Escuela superior de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado", but was not successful.

For several years, he participated in the National Exhibition of Fine Arts, where his painting of Saint Catherine being transported by angels won a gold medal. His canvas depicting Agustina de Aragón was distributed as a lithograph and used to illustrate a novel. In 1864, he won a grant to study in Rome for his version of the Raising of Jairus' daughter.

Later, in 1871, the Archbishop of Caracas, Silvestre Guevara y Lira, who was attending the First Vatican Council, saw some of Navarro's paintings and invited him to execute murals in the Caracas Cathedral; a project that would never be realized.

Navarro arrived in Venezuela in 1872, shortly after President Antonio Guzmán Blanco had consolidated his rule at the Battle of San Fernando de Apure. The editor of La Opinión Nacional, a pro-government daily, suggested that the newly arrived (and politically neutral) Navarro would be the perfect choice to immortalize the event. The huge painting hung in the Senate chambers at the Palacio Federal Legislativo until 1889, when it disappeared; probably destroyed by opponents of the former President who vandalized statues and portraits of him throughout the country.

Text courtesy of Wikipedia, 2023