Juan de Pareja 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 Saint Matthew (sometimes also referred to as The Vocation of Saint Matthew) is on display at the Museo del Prado in Madrid, Spain.
Pareja became Velázquez's assistant sometime after the master returned to Madrid from his first trip to Italy in January 1631. After the death of Velázquez, Pareja then became an assistant to painter Juan del Mazo.
Juan de Pareja was born into slavery, the son of an enslaved African-descended woman and a white Spanish father. He was described as a morisco, being "of mixed parentage and unusual 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 a racial classification applied to a person with mulatto and Spanish parents, it is equivalent to English term "quadroon".
Pareja was inherited by Velázquez 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 City. The document of his manumission is held in the state archive of Rome.
Only ten known works exist by Pareja.
Portrait of Agustín Moreto, (c.1648-53), 102 x 69 cm, Museum of Lázaro Galdiano
Portrait of a Monk (1651), 92 x 77 cm, Hermitage Museum
The Flight into Egypt, (1658), 168.9 x 125.4 cm, John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Florida
El bautismo de Cristo, (1667) 230 x 356 cm, Museo de Huesca/Museo del Prado
Portrait of José Ratés Dalmau, (c.1660), 116.9 x 97.8 cm, Museu de Belles Arts de València
The Calling of Saint Matthew, (1661), 225 x 325 cm, Prado Museum

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