JAUREGUI Y AGUILAR, JUAN DE. - Spanish poet and painter, from an aristocratic family, b. in Seville, where he was baptized on 24 Nov. 1583, d. in Madrid in 1641. He was squire to Queen Elizabeth (wife of Philip IV) and a knight of Calatrava.
He resided for some time in Rome, deriving from it artistic and poetic suggestions (he copied from Michelangelo, Raphael and Guido Reni; he executed portraits; he translated excellently Tasso's Aminta and began the free version of Lucan's Pharsalia). Returned to Seville, he took sides against Quevedo and Góngora, against whom he set a Discurso poético (Madrid 1624) and an Antidote contra las Soledades (the manuscript exists in the Madrid National Library); but he was a friend of Lope de Vega and of Cervantes, who praised his Aminta. His poetic production in part adheres to the Italianizing manner (Rimas, Seville 1618, which, alongside the profane ones, contain some sacred lyrics, such as Al desponsorio de Cristo con s. Teresa and the paraphrase of Psalm 136), in part is close to that Gongorist fashion which J. y A. in theory had opposed; from Ovid, instead, the poem Orfeo (Madrid 1624) takes its inspiration.
As a writer, J. y A. documents in an interesting way the aesthetic taste of Spain at the beginning of the seventeenth century (cf., in particular, his Dialogo entre la naturaleza y la dos artes, pintura y escultura and Por el arte de la pintura, Madrid 1633); as a painter, besides some portraits (among them the famous one of Cervantes, now in the Madrid Museum) and the engravings for the Vestigatio arcani sensus in Apocalypsi (Antwerp 1619) of the Jesuit L. Alcázar, he left an engraving of the ven. Luis de Granada and two canvases depicting St. Joseph and St. Teresa of Ávila.
Bibliography4 works
Enzo Navarra