Juan Bautista Diamante

Who was Juan Bautista Diamante?

Juan Bautista Diamante, minor Spanish dramatist of the school of Calderón, was the son of a Portuguese mother and a Sicilian merchant of Greek parentage who came to Madrid some time before 1631. He began writing for the stage in the early 1650s, gained favour at the courts of Philip IV and Charles II, and became a knight of St. John in 1660. It has been suggested that Juan Bautista may have been of Jewish stock, and that the Diamante family, including the playwright's half-brothers Pablo and Francisco Diamante who also achieved success in their different spheres, falsified public records of marriage, baptism, etc. in order to obscure their marrano origins.

Thirty-nine plays were published in his lifetime, twenty-four of them as Comedias de Fr. Don Iuan Bautista Diamante . . . in two parts in 1670 and 1674; the remainder appeared between 1656 and 1672 in the series Comedias escogidas de los mejores de España . . . . Many plays were printed or reprinted as sueltas in the eighteenth century.

Diamante collaborated with other playwrights and poets of the time, notably Matos Fragoso, Moreto, Juan Vélez, Sebastián de Villaviciosa, Lanini y Sagredo, Arce de los Reyes and Francisco de Avellaneda. In all, including works of collaboration, he produced around forty-five plays, plus two autos, a number of zarzuelas, and a handful of minor pieces.