Angelica Kauffman
The international star of Neoclassicism.
Angelica Kauffman was one of the founders of the Royal Academy in London. She painted history paintings – a genre otherwise closed to women.
Angelica Kauffman was born in 1741 in Chur in Switzerland. Her father was an itinerant painter, and she learned to paint in his company. She was a child prodigy, spoke several languages and was so gifted a singer that for a long time she hesitated between music and painting. She travelled around Italy at an early age, studying the old masters. In Rome in 1764 she painted a portrait of the German art theorist Johann Joachim Winckelmann, the most important thinker of Neoclassicism. It is now in the Kunsthaus Zürich.
In 1766 she moved to London, where she quickly became a star. She painted portraits but concentrated above all on history painting, that is, scenes from antiquity, mythology and history. This was considered the highest genre, but it was virtually closed to women because they were not allowed to study from the nude model. In 1768 she became one of the founders of the Royal Academy, one of only two women. The next woman to become a full member did so only in the 20th century.
Kauffman's style is soft and elegant, with light colours and graceful figures. Her subjects often concern female virtues and feelings, for example Cornelia, Mother of the Gracchi (1785), in which a Roman mother presents her children as her “jewels”. The painting is in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in the United States. Her pictures circulated as engravings and were used as decoration on furniture, porcelain and walls in British homes.
Her private life was dramatic. In 1767 she married a man who claimed to be a count but was an impostor, and the marriage was dissolved. In 1781 she married the Venetian painter Antonio Zucchi and moved to Rome. There her home became a meeting place for artists and writers, Goethe among them.
She died in Rome in 1807. Her funeral was arranged by the sculptor Antonio Canova and was as grand as a prince's. Kauffman showed that a woman could build a major international career as an artist, and she is today one of the most widely discussed women in the history of art.