Calle Juan de Jáuregui

Juan de Jáuregui was born in Seville in 1583. He went to Rome young to learn painting, and did so well that Francisco Pacheco praised him in his Libro de los retratos. That second talent gives rise to an anecdote that still intrigues. In the prologue to his Novelas ejemplares (1613), Cervantes regretted having no portrait of himself to hand and mentioned a painter friend who could have made one. That conditional verb was enough for the famous portrait of Cervantes held by the Spanish Academy, now regarded as spurious, to be attributed to Jáuregui for centuries: the face by which almost everyone pictures the author of the Quixote may never have come from his brush. As a poet he left his own mark. He rendered Tasso’s Aminta into Spanish, attacked Góngora and returned to the charge with the Discurso poético (1624), though his own Orfeo, of that same year, shows the traits of the style he was fighting. He settled in Madrid around 1620 and the court took him in as literary censor and equerry to the queen. He died in the city in 1641. Calle de Juan de Jáuregui belongs to the Colonia del Retiro, known as “La Regalada,” built between 1925 and 1932. Whoever named its streets chose to fill them with Golden Age figures, which is why Calle de Juan de la Cueva lies a step away.