As Goya had done with Rosario Weiss, Vicente López undertook to train another of the foremost artists of Spanish Romanticism, the miniaturist Teresa Nicolau. These portraits evince their great respect and appreciation for each other. The court painter depicted his pupil in a three-quarter bust with a white lace mantilla, and although by then she had already been made a member of the Academy by merit, he omitted any allusion to the fact that she was a painter. In response to her master’s gesture, Nicolau portrayed him frontally, wearing the decorations of the Order of Charles III and Isabella the Catholic while holding a lead pencil in his hand. This delicate miniature was thought until recently to be the work of López himself, a fact which underlines its extraordinary quality.

G. Navarro, Carlos, Invitadas. Fragmentos sobre mujeres, ideología y artes plásticas en España (1833-1931), Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado, 2020, p.338 nº 98