Portrait of Cesáreo María Sáenz y de la Barrera

Painted in 1842 and in the Museo del Prado, this portrait of Cesáreo María Sáenz y de la Barrera belongs to the rich group of male portraits in which Esquivel recorded the faces of liberal Spain's professional and political class. The name Sáenz suggests a Basque or Navarrese background — families from the Basque Country played a prominent role in Spanish liberalism during the Carlist Wars — and the subject's professional dress and direct bearing project the self-confidence of a man who has prospered in the new dispensation. By 1842 Esquivel had recovered from his eye illness and was at the height of his powers, able to produce portraits of exceptional technical precision while maintaining the psychological penetration that distinguished his best male subjects from the more socially conventional female commissions. The Prado's collection of Esquivel portraits constitutes one of the most important visual records of Madrid's educated middle class in the Isabel II period.

The portrait uses Esquivel's standard male portrait formula: dark ground, contrasting white cravat, carefully modelled face. The coat is established in a single warm dark tone with minimal modelling, concentrating all pictorial investment in the face, which is built through a careful sequence of transparent glazes and opaque highlights. The shallow depth of field — background and sitter occupy nearly the same tonal range — flattens space while emphasising the sitter's face.