thumb|An anonymous 16th-century painting of Mendoza ([[Museo del Prado).]]
Diego Hurtado de Mendoza (; 1503/414 August 1575), Spanish novelist, poet, diplomat and historian.
Life
Diego Hurtado de Mendoza was born in Granada in late 1503 or early 1504.
He was a younger son of the second Conde de Tendilla Íñigo López de Mendoza y Quiñones and Francisca Pacheco. His older siblings were: Luis de Mendoza y Pacheco, II Marquis de Mondejar, III Count Tendilla, governor of Granada; Antonio de Mendoza y Pacheco, first Viceroy of New Spain and later Peru; Bernardino de Mendoza y Pacheco, Captain of the Spanish Galleys most noted for the (temporary) victory over Tunis; Francisco de Mendoza y Pacheco, Bishop of Úbeda; and Maria Mendoza y Pacheco (María Pacheco), a leader of the 1519 Revolt of the Comuneros. The Marquis of Santillana was his great-grandfather.
On leaving the University of Salamanca, Mendoza abandoned his intention of taking orders, served under Charles V in Italy, and attended lectures at the universities of Bologna, Padua and Rome. In 1537 he was sent to the Kingdom of England to arrange a marriage between Henry VIII and Christina of Denmark, the widowed Duchess of Milan, as well as a marriage between Prince Louis of Portugal and Mary Tudor. Despite the failure of his mission, he retained the confidence of the emperor, and in 1539 was appointed ambassador at Venice. During his years in Venice he built up his library, buying books printed by the Aldine Press and employing scribes to copy Greek manuscripts. He procured copies of the Greek manuscripts belonging to Cardinal Bessarion, and acquired other rare codices from the monastery of Mount Athos.), to poetry, and to his history of the Moorish insurrection of 1568–1570. That he excelled in picaresque malice is proved by his indecorous verses written in the old Castilian metres and in the more elaborate measures imported from Italy. Mendoza is also believed to be the author of the letters to Feliciano de Silva and to Captain Salazar, published by Antonio Paz y Melia in Sales Espanolas (Madrid, 1900).