Juan Pantoja de la Cruz painted a great number of state portraits with the combined forces of his studio, his attendants, apprentices, and collaborators.

He was primarily a portrait painter to the royal family, (whom he accompanied on journeys to Valladolid, Burgos, Lerma and the Escorial), and to the higher aristocracy.

Pantoja also painted religious works primarily commissioned by the Spanish Queen, Margaret of Austria, wife of Philip III.

Pantoja's paintings of religious themes also contain many portraits as auxiliary figures as in The Birth of the Blessed Virgin (1603) in which he included the mother of the Queen.

His art was severely criticised by historians who were prejudiced against non-Italian portraiture and therefore dismissed him as an "uninspired, dull" though "painfully hard-working" painter at the court of Philip III.

The compositional formula of Velázquez's state portraits derives from his Spanish predecessors, among them Pantoja de la Cruz.

In his best works, Pantoja introduced an impressive combination of sophistication and geometric abstraction achieved by means of powerful contrast of light and shadow.