Availing himself of trompe l’oeil, the painter portrays himself at the age of 26 in an oval-shaped painting placed on a table surrounded by various items alluding to the theory and practice of the arts: a palette with brushes, a plaster cast of a female torso, several scrolls, an inkwell, books... Particularly noteworthy, because it is open, is the Treatise on Pictorial Anatomy –whose manuscript is kept in the Prado Museum– authored by his father, the great master of Romantic painting of Seville, Antonio María Esquivel (Text drawn from cat. exp. Los Objetos Hablan, Museo Nacional del Prado, 2016)