 His family moved to Madrid in 1623, and he trained in Madrid during the late 1620s as an apprentice to Pedro de las Cuevas and Bartolomé Román.He came to the notice of Velázquez for his work in the cloister of Doña María de Aragón and in the Church of Our Lady of the Rosary ("Iglesia de la Virgen del Rosario"), , La Joyosa.In 1658, Carreño was hired as an assistant on a royal commission to paint frescoes in the Alcázar of Madrid; later destroyed in the fire of 1734.