He was the son of a silversmith and first learned the painter's profession from his maternal uncle Luis Planes.
[3] In addition to academic canvases, Ximeno also created the frescos in the churches of Jesús María and La Profesa, in Mexico City.
[2] Notable among these are his illustrations for the very popular first Spanish translation of Robinson Crusoe, by Tomás de Iriarte (1750–91), published in Madrid in 1789[4] (which is in fact a translation not of Daniel Defoe's original text, but of Joachim Heinrich Campe’s adaptation, published in Hamburg 1779–80[5]).
There are also drawings by José Juan Camarón y Meliá (1760–1819) for this edition of Robinson Crusoe in the British Library.
[6] More prints after drawings by Ximeno y Planes appear as illustrations in two editions of Don Quixote, one published by the Real Academia de la Lengua in Madrid (now Real Academia Española) and printed by Ibarra in 1780, and another published by Gabriel Sancha [es] between 1797 and 1798.