Pantoja followed the Spanish tradition of court painter of royal portraits, going back to the famous portrait of Charles V (Pantoja's copy of which is in the Escorial) and other portraits by Titian. Antonis Mor, Alonso Sanchez Coello and Pantoja himself continued the tradition. His art was severely criticised by historians who were prejudiced against non-Italian portraiture and therefore dismissed him as an "uninspired, dull" though "painfully hard-working" painter at the court of Philip III. The compositional formula of Velázquez's state portraits derives from his Spanish predecessors, among them Pantoja de la Cruz.