Don Juan Mateos is an oil on canvas painting widely attributed to Diego Velázquez created circa 1632–3.

[1] The portrait is referenced in 1685 among the assets of Cesare Ignazio of Modena [it] as "ritratto di Monsu Velasco [...] quale figura que ha le mani solo abbozzate" or "portrait of Signor Velasco ... hands but roughly sketched".

[5] Art historian Carl Justi compared the Velázquez portrait with the small portrait of the author and hunter engraved by Pedro Perete that appears on the front of his work, Origen y dignidad de la caza (Origin and Dignity of Hunting).

[6] Jonathan Brown suggests that the portrait could have been acquired on the death of Mateos by Ippolito Camillo Guidi, ambassador of the Duke of Modena in Madrid from 1641 to 1643, commissioned by the Duke, after a visit to the Madrid court, to purchase works of art to hedge against the constant devaluation of the billon currency used in his remuneration.

[7] The inventory of the goods left at his death by Mateos included, in fact, together with a small number of religious paintings, two portraits, one his and another of his wife, María Marquart, now deceased, but they were cited as full-length portraits and were jointly valued at just 100 reales, with no indication of the painter's name.