He was one of the most active and important members of the family that dominated the art scene in Madrid throughout almost the entire nineteenth century. The Madrazo family included important painters such as José, Ricardo and Raimundo and, by marriage, Mariano Fortuny, as well as historian Pedro de Madrazo. Federico received his early training in Madrid at his father José’s studio and at the Academy of Fine Arts, where he was elected academician before his twentieth birthday. During that period he made some paintings for the Royal Family which were of such quality that they earned him the title of Supernumerary Court Painter in 1833. That same year, he spent some months in Paris, working in Jean-Auguste-Dominque Ingres’s studio. A man of considerable intellect, he took advantage of his return to Madrid to gather a group of friends with shared aspirations — Valentín de Carderera and Eugenio de Ochoa, among others — and founded one of Spanish Romanticism’s most emblematic publications, the magazine El Artista, which first appeared in 1835.

He spent the period between 1837 and 1842 in Paris and Rome, laying the foundations for an international prestige that lasted the rest of his life. During those years, he studied with Ingres and also with Johann Friedrich Overbeck, who became his main stylistic referents — the former for the elegance and the skilful composition of his portraits, and the latter for his treatment of colour and mass, especially in religious compositions.

After Rome, he returned to Madrid, arriving in 1842 with the intention of painting large historical and religious paintings to demonstrate his technical gifts and his intellectual preparation. The market for this type of works was already in other hands, however, and he had to dedicate himself primarily to portraiture. His extraordinary technique, enormous capacity for work, elegance and intelligent manner of flattering his model’s physical appearance without substantially altering reality made him the portrait painter most coveted by Madrid’s high society and one of the greatest of that century in Spain. Consequently, his work constitutes not only exceptional documentation of the likenesses of that period’s leading lights in the Spanish economy, politics and arts, but also of their ideals and aspirations as reflected in the style of his works, their settings, clothing and objects.

Beginning in 1842, he spent most of his time in Madrid, although he often travelled abroad, and even lived for two years in Paris between 1878 and 1880. This part of his life is marked by artistic success and official recognition, which led to important posts in the court’s cultural institutions. In 1843, he was appointed director of painting at the Academia de San Fernando. In 1857, Queen Isabella II made him her First Court Painter, and between 1860 and 1868 he directed the Museo del Prado, a post he held again between 1881 and 1894.

Javier Portús

Born into a Basque family that had migrated to Santander, he inclined politically towards conservative positions. He began his career in the Administration as a very young man, and rose through all the ranks of the Finance Ministry until he reached the top. He was Minister of Finance on four occasions, and once of Public Works. After a first very short spell as Finance Minister in 1856, he had his second mandate during the Long Government of the Liberal Union (1858-1863) under the presidency of General Leopoldo O’Donnell, when he was able to develop a fiscal policy of his own during a period characterised economically by growth, confident progress and abundant resources from the point of view of the Internal Revenue. Salaverría became “O’Donnell’s financier,” as José Larraz called him, in a cabinet that was one of the most stable of the nineteenth century. From 1863 to 1864, he was vice-governor of Banco de España.

During his third mandate, in the government formed by Alejandro Mon in March 1864 (and which lasted only a few months), Salaverría carried out the monetary reform that established the escudo as the unit of reference in the Spanish system. His last mandate as Finance Minister was during the first Restoration Government under the presidency of Cánovas del Castillo, when Salaverría encountered a critical situation with an Internal Revenue close to bankruptcy. Although he only remained in the post for a year and a half, from December 1874 to June 1876, he was able to present a new budget with its supplementary laws before his resignation, and his objectives and forecasts were generally accomplished in the ensuing years. He resigned because exhaustion and worries had undermined his health. When he recovered, he was appointed governor of Banco de España, a post he held from January to October 1877, and which he also relinquished for health reasons. He then retired from political life, and would never have anything to do with it again. He died many years later, in 1896, in Donostia / San Sebastián.

Elena Serrano García