Juan de Jáuregui
Juan Martínez de Jáuregui y Aguilar was a Spanish poet, scholar and painter in the Siglo de Oro.
Early life
Juan Martínez de Jáuregui y Hurtado de la Sal was born and baptized in Seville, Andalusia. His parents were Miguel Martínez de Jáuregui, a hidalgo—which is an untitled Spanish nobleman—from La Rioja, and Doña Isabel de la Sal from Seville. He was the fifth of their ten children; the oldest became later commissioner of Seville. The poet changed his second name to "Aguilar", coming from one of his grandmothers.About his youth very little is known. In his discourse Arte de la pintura some references to various travels to Italy can be found and it is known that he stayed in Rome, probably to study painting.
Career
He returned to Spain shortly before 1610 with a reputation as both a painter and a poet. In the preface to the Novelas exemplares, Miguel de Cervantes says that Jáuregui painted his picture, and in the second part of Don Quixote, praises Jáuregui's translation of Tasso's Aminta, published at Rome in 1607. The picture by Jáuregui is lost; there is no evidence supporting any surviving painting being that of Jáuregui.Jáuregui's Rimas, a collection of graceful lyrics, where he integrated also some translations of Horace, Martial and Ausonius, is preceded by a controversial preface which attracted much attention on account of its outspoken declaration against the culteranismo of Luis de Góngora. Another Spanish poet, Francisco de Quevedo, mentioned Jáuregui in "La perinola" with scorn.
Through the influence of Gaspar de Guzmán, Count-Duke of Olivares, he was appointed groom of the chamber to Philip IV, and gave an elaborate exposition of his artistic doctrines in the Discurso poético contra el hablar culto y oscuro, a skillful attack on the new theories, which procured for its author membership in the honorary Order of Calatrava. It is plain, however, that the shock of controversy had shaken Jáuregui's convictions, and his poem Orfeo is visibly influenced by Góngora.