Juan Mateos (c. 1575 – 15 August 1643) was a horseback hunter and the principal arbalist of Philip IV of Spain.

)[1] He was the son of Gonzalo Mateos, senior arbalist to the Marquis of Villanueva del Fresno from 1601 to 1606, i.e., while the Spanish Royal Court was in Valladolid [es].

Mateos' likeness is known through a bust portrait engraved by Pedro Perete that appears on the front of Origen y dignidad de la caça, one of whose illustrations is signed by painter Francisco Collantes.

[3]: 166  Based on that engraving, art historian Carl Justi identified Mateos as the model of an unfinished portrait of a gentleman cut below the waist painted by Velázquez around 1632 (Don Juan Mateos, in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister),[4]: 356  and, in the opinion of Enriqueta Harris, Mateos is one of the characters depicted with the Count-Duke of Olivares and Alonso Martínez de Espinar in Prince Baltasar Carlos in the Riding School.

Among the properties inventoried at his death were two full-length oil portraits, one of his wife María and the other of him, probably the Don Juan Mateos, though the name of the painter is not indicated; these were valued at 100 reales.