Juan van der Hamen y (Gómez de) León (baptized 8 April 1596 – 28 March 1631) was a Spanish painter, a master of still life paintings, also called bodegones.

His father was Jan van der Hamen, a Flemish courtier, who had moved from Brussels to Madrid as an archero in the King's noble guard before 1586.

Juan van der Hamen's mother was Dorotea Witman Gómez de León, a half-Flemish woman of noble Toledan ancestry.

[1] Van der Hamen and his two brothers Pedro and Lorenzo, both of whom were writers, emphasized their Spanish roots by using all or part of their maternal grandmother's family name, Gómez de León.

[2] Juan van der Hamen inherited his father's honorary positions at the court of Philip II and also served as unsalaried painter of the king.

Van der Hamen's artistic activity in the service of the crown is first recorded on 10 September 1619, when he was paid for painting a still life for the country palace of El Pardo, to the north of Madrid.

The series itself was a focal point for philosophic speculation on the art of portraiture by some of the most distinguished minds of the time, who frequently praised Juan van der Hamen in verse and prose.

Van der Hamen probably began painting floral arrangements in response to the flower pieces of Flemish artists, such as Jan Brueghel the Elder, who were regarded as exemplary masters in the field and whose works were much sought after in Spain.

The painting adopts a Flemish compositional type and reveals an interest in the play of light on iridescent fabrics that probably derived in the style of Juan Bautista Maino.

Van der Hamen is well known as a gifted still life painter of the Spanish Golden Age, but during his lifetime he was most esteemed by his peers for his versatility—for his portraits, allegories, landscapes, flower paintings, and large-scale works for churches and convents.

Van der Hamen was considered as the greatest Spanish still life painter of the seventeenth century, when that form was revived as a worthy subject in and of itself rather than as an adjunct to a symbolic or narrative work.

Van der Hamen drastically reduces the number of elements and arranges the remainder into exquisitely balanced, asymmetrical compositions, strongly lit in the Spanish manner.