Christ as the Gardener

In 1553 the Spanish ambassador in Venice looked in on Titian's studio and reported that the painting standing there was well worth seeing. It was a Noli me tangere, the risen Christ meeting Mary Magdalene in a garden, made for Mary of Hungary, the sister of Emperor Charles V. After it reached Spain the canvas decayed badly, and on 4 July 1566 Philip II ordered Juan Fernández de Navarrete, a painter deaf since childhood and known as El Mudo, to cut out the head of Christ, the one part still sound. The rest was lost, although Alonso Sánchez Coello had copied the whole composition before that. What is left shows Christ in the gardener's guise that made the Magdalene take him for the man who tended the garden. The fragment reached the monastery of El Escorial on 15 April 1574 and stayed in its sacristy until 1839.