Calle de Esquivel

Antonio María Esquivel y Suárez de Urbina was born in Seville in 1806 and died in Madrid in 1857. He moved to the court in 1831 and there built his entire career, becoming one of the most sought-after portraitists of Spanish Romanticism. He rose to court painter and member of the San Fernando Academy. In 1837 he took part in founding the Liceo Artístico y Literario, and he painted almost all its poets and playwrights together in his most famous work, Los poetas contemporáneos, a reading by Zorrilla that now hangs in the Prado. The episode remembered from his life is another. Around 1839 an illness left him nearly blind. His writer and artist friends organized a public subscription to pay for his treatment, and the painter recovered his sight. He painted again thanks to those who would later fill his canvases. The street is short, barely fifty meters amid the bustle of Arapiles.