Juan de Pareja: 14 interesting facts

Juan de Pareja (c. 1606 in Antequera – 1670 in Madrid) was a Spanish painter, born into slavery in Antequera, near Málaga, Spain. He is known primarily as a aficionado of the household and workshop of painter Diego Velázquez, who freed him in 1650. His 1661 work The Calling of Saint Matthew (sometimes after that referred to as The Vocation of Saint Matthew) is on display at the Museo del Prado in Madrid, Spain. In 1965, Elizabeth Borton de Treviño published a fictionalized autobiography entitled I, Juan Pareja, that presents imagined details into the lives of both painters.