Armed with a girded sword and dressed in half-armour and a ruff with a large lettuce, in the fashion of the reign of Philip III, to match the cuffs, the portrait of Juan de Acebedo as a praying man is the only one of the set of four funerary sculptures in the chapel of San Juan Bautista de Hoznayo that lacks an inscription. Like that of his older brother, Juan Bautista, it was commissioned by Fernando de Acebedo, the youngest of the brothers, from the Soria sculptor Gabriel de Pinedo in 1612.
He is the third of the four Acebedo brothers and we only know of him, thanks to Escagedo y Salmón (1923), that he was a knight of the order of Santiago - the cross of which is engraved on his chest -, a Major Constable of the Inquisition, Captain General of Asturias - possibly evoking the feather-adorned morrion placed on the throne and the cane attached to the cushion on which he kneels - and perpetual warden of the fortress of Ampudia, whose lord was Francisco de Sandoval y Rojas, 1st Duke of Lerma, which indicates that like the rest of the brothers he was the work of the powerful Valide of Philip III.
