Cristoforo de Predis

Predis was an Italian miniaturist and illuminator working in what thanks to the Lives of the Artists (1550), a book by Florentine writer Giorgio Vasari (30 July 1511 – 27 June 1574), we know as the Renaissance. Born deaf and mute in Prato to artistic parents Leonardo de Predis and Margaret Giussani, Cristoforo's siblings recognised his strengths and in 1471 helped him secure work as an illuminator for the Court of the Sforza, arguing that though unable to speak and hear, their brother was highly intelligent and a skilled painted.

The de Predis family hosted Leonardo da Vinci when he visited Milan for the commission Virgin of the Rocks, and Leonardo met Cristoforo on that occasion. Leonardo later wrote about what can be learned from deaf people and their expressiveness in his treatise on painting Codex Urbinas in which he notes:

"Do not reproach me for proposing to you a teacher who does not speak, because he will teach you better with facts than all other teachers through words. The good painter has two principal things to paint, namely the man and the concept of his mind. The first is easy, the second difficult, because one has to depict with gestures and movements of the limbs, and this must be learned from the mute, who do it better than any other kind of men."

There are just four known works of de Predis, based on his signature. Records indicate de Predis was commissioned by the Borromeo family to produce the Borromeo Book of Hours. And then there's the Le Sphaerae Coelestis et Planetarum (The Spheres of the Heavens and the Planets), also referred to as De Sphaera, an elaborate illuminated manuscript richly decorated with 12 different colours and gold leaf. The first couple of pages display astrological charts containing constellations and diagrams demonstrating how to utilise astrolabes. Each page has an undecorated margin on the parchment. Gold leaf outlines each painted image.