Benito Navarrete Prieto is a professor of Art History at the University of Alcalá.  He has been director of Cultural Infrastructures and Heritage of the Institute of Culture and Arts of the Seville City Council (2011-2015) and he was previously advisor to the Focus-Abengoa Foundation and founder of the Diego Velázquez Research Center.

He defended his doctoral thesis, 17th Century Andalusian Painting and Its Engraved Sources (1997), under the direction of Alfonso E. Pérez Sánchez. He has focused mainly on the study of Andalusian and Madrid painting and Spanish drawing. He fulfilled two prominent monographs on Ignacio de Ries (2001) and Antonio del Castillo (2004), as well as a catalogue raisonné of Del Castillo's drawings, and has been the principal researcher for the project Sources and models of the Baroque Painting in Madrid. He has curated several exhibitions, such as Zurbarán y su Obrador. Pinturas para el Nuevo Mundo (1998), El papel del dibujo en España (2006) and El joven Murillo (2009).

In collaboration with Alfonso E. Pérez Sánchez, he has developed the monograph dedicated to Luis Tristán (2001) and the study and catalogue raisonné Álbum Alcubierre. Dibujos. De la Sevilla ilustrada del conde del Águila a la colección de Juan Abelló (2009). He has published in prestigious national and foreign magazines catalogued on the Web of Science, such as Archivo Español de Arte, Master Drawings or Print Quarterly. He has studied the Spanish drawings of the Uffizi commissioned by the Mapfre Foundation. The result of this work is the exhibition of the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts: I Segni nel Tempo. Spanish Drawings from the Uffizi Collection (2016). His latest works include his essay Murillo y las metáforas de la imagen, published by Cátedra, and the exhibition Murillo and his Trail in Seville on the occasion of the artist's centenary, commissioned by the Seville City Council. His book Murillo: Persuasion and Aura will soon be released at the prestigious Harvey-Miller (Brepols) publishing house.

He has also been ospite scientifico at the Kunsthistorisches Institut Max-Planck in Florence and visiting professor at the Ibero-American University and the UNAM, the National Autonomous University of Mexico. He has also collaborated with the State Research Agency in evaluation work and in the movable property commission of the Regional Government of Andalusia. He is also a patron of the National Sculpture Museum of Valladolid and a member of the Board of Patrons of the Royal Alcázars of Seville. He is currently the principal investigator of the research project Italian and Spanish 16th Century Drawings in Biblioteca Nacional de España.

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7966-9166