Christ the Saviour

This Christ the Saviour, painted in 1842 and in the Museo del Prado, belongs to the tradition of devotional bust-length figures of Christ that runs from El Greco through Murillo into the nineteenth century. Esquivel — Sevillian-born and formed in a city whose Baroque religious painting tradition was among the richest in Europe — brought deep knowledge of this heritage to his religious works. The year 1842 was extraordinarily productive for him, coinciding with his recovery from the near-blindness of previous years and a burst of energy across multiple genres. A half-length Christ figure blessing the viewer was among the most commercially viable of devotional images: too large for personal prayer books, it served the domestic altars and private oratories of the devout bourgeoisie who wished to display their piety without the expense of a large altarpiece. Esquivel's treatment balances the supernatural and the human, offering a Christ who is simultaneously divine presence and empathetically rendered human face.

The devotional purpose of the image governs its technical approach: Esquivel employs deep, warm shadows and luminous highlights to give the face a supernatural glow without recourse to overtly stylised means. The hair and beard are rendered with flowing individual brushstrokes that recall the Murillesque softness of the Sevillian tradition, while the drapery uses the bold sculptural folds associated with the Spanish Counter-Reformation tradition.