Calle de Juan Pantoja

The name honors Juan Pantoja de la Cruz, a painter born in Valladolid in 1553 who came to Madrid very young to train in the workshop of Alonso Sánchez Coello. When his master died in 1588, he began signing his own paintings and earned the post left vacant: court portraitist. In 1596 he was named painter of the chamber, first to Philip II and then to Philip III. Pantoja painted the fabrics, jewels and lace of royalty with a precision inherited from the Flemish school. From that reputation for exactness comes the most repeated tale about him: it is said he painted an eagle so truly that a live eagle, on seeing it, hurled itself against the canvas and shredded it with its beak. He died in Madrid in 1608. The street lies in the Bellas Vistas district of Tetuán, running from Bravo Murillo —⁠where it meets Palencia⁠— to end at Tenerife. A short stretch, barely two hundred meters, for a painter who portrayed two kings of Spain.