Juan de Pareja

Juan de Pareja
Detail of Velázquez's Portrait of Juan de Pareja
Born	1606 Antequera, Málaga, Spain
Died	1670 (aged 63–64) Madrid, Spain
Education	Diego Velázquez
Known for	Painting
Movement	Baroque

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 member of the household and workshop of painter Diego Velázquez, who freed him in 1650. His 1661 work The Calling of St. Matthew (sometimes also referred to as The Vocation of St. Matthew) is on display at the Museo del Prado in Madrid, Spain.

De Pareja became Velazquez's assistant sometime after the master returned to Madrid from his first trip to Italy in January 1631. After the death of Velazquez, Pareja became an assistant to painter Juan del Mazo.

Juan de Pareja was born into slavery, the son of an enslaved mulatto (mixed-race) woman and a white Spanish father. He was described as a "Morisco," being "of mixed parentage and a strange color." At the time morisco had two possible meanings. It referred both to descendants of Muslims who converted to Catholicism and remained in Spain after the Reconquest, and to the children of a white Spaniard and a mulatto.

De Pareja was inherited by Velazquez and became an assistant in his painting after 1631. Velázquez later freed Pareja while they were in Rome during a trip to Italy in 1650. Around the same time Velázquez painted Pareja's portrait, which is now held in New York. The document of his manumission is held in the state archive of Rome.