Angelica Kauffmann

• Name — Angelica Kauffman • Birth Name — Maria Anna Angelika Kauffmann • Born — 30 October 1741 • Birthplace — Chur, League of God's House, present-day Graubünden, Switzerland • Died — 5 November 1807 • Place of death — Rome, Papal States • Field — Painting • Movement — Neoclassicism • Father — Joseph Johann Kauffmann

• Illustration — Detail of Tragedy and Comedy, painted in Rome in 1791 (National Museum in Warsaw). Harmonious and powerful colours and the soft-brushed, multi-layered style of English portraitists, Sir Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough, are typical for Kauffman's paintings. • Illustration — Christ and the Samaritan Woman at the Well (1795), oil on canvas, 123.5 x 158.5 cm., Neue Pinakothek, Munich Kauffman was born at Chur in Graubünden, Switzerland. Her family moved to Morbegno in 1742, then to Como in Lombardy in 1752 at that time under Austrian rule. In 1757, she accompanied her father to Schwarzenberg in Vorarlberg/Austria, where her father was working for the local bishop. Her father, Joseph Johann Kauffmann (1707–1782), was a relatively poor man but a skilled Austrian muralist and painter, who was often travelling for his work. He trained Angelica and she worked as his assistant, moving through Switzerland, Austria, and Italy. Angelica, a child prodigy, rapidly acquired four languages from her mother, Cleophea Lutz (1717–1757): German, Italian, French and English. She also was a talented singer and showed talent as a musician. Angelica was forced to choose between opera and art. She quickly chose art as a Catholic priest told her that the opera was a dangerous place filled with "seedy people". By her twelfth year she had already become known as a painter, with bishops and nobles sitting for her. In 1757, her mother died and her father decided to move to Milan. Later visits to Italy of long duration followed. Kauffman and her family moved to Florence in June 1762, where the young artist first discovered the painting style that was coined Neoclassical painting. In October, 1762, she became an elected member of the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno and an honorary member of the Accademia Clementina di Bologna. Moving to Rome in January 1763, Kauffman was introduced to the British community. While learning more English and continuing her portraiture, a few months later the family moved again to Naples. There, Kauffman studied works by the Old Masters, and had her first painting sent to a public exhibition in London. Later in 1763, she visited Rome, returning again in 1764. From Rome, she passed to Bologna and Venice, everywhere feted for her talents and charm. Writing from Rome in August 1764 to his friend Franke, Winckelmann refers to her popularity; she was then painting his picture, a half-length; of which she also made an etching. She spoke Italian as well as German, he says, and expressed herself with facility in French and English – one result of the last-named accomplishment being that she became a popular portraitist for British visitors to Rome. "She may be styled beautiful," he adds, "and in singing may vie with our best virtuosi." In May 1765, she was elected to the Accademia di San Luca, submitting Allegory of Hope as her reception piece. That same month her work appeared in England in an exhibition of the Free Society of Artists. She moved to England shortly afterwards, and established herself as a leading artist.

• Illustration — Portrait of David Garrick (1764), oil on canvas, 84 x 69 cm., Burghley House, Lincolnshire While in Venice, Kauffman was persuaded by Lady Wentworth, the wife of the British ambassador, to accompany her to London. Soon she lodged with a local surgeon's family, including Anne Home. Her first work displayed in London was the portrait of David Garrick, exhibited the year before her arrival in June, 1766. The rank of Lady Wentworth opened society to her, and she was well received, with the royal family especially showing her great favour. Her firmest friend, however, was Sir Joshua Reynolds. In his pocketbook, her name as "Miss Angelica" or "Miss Angel" appears frequently; and in 1766 he painted her, a compliment which she returned by her Portrait of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Another instance of her intimacy with Reynolds is to be found in her variation of Guercino's Et in Arcadia ego, a subject that Reynolds repeated a few years later in his portrait of Mrs Bouverie and Mrs Crewe. In 1767, Kauffman was seduced by an imposter going by the name Count Frederick de Horn, whom she married, but they separated the following year. It was probably owing to Reynolds's good offices that she was among the signatories to the petition to the King for the establishment of the Royal Academy. In its first catalogue of 1769, she appears with "R.A." after her name (an honour she shared with one other woman, Mary Moser); and she contributed the Interview of Hector and Andromache, and three other classical compositions. She spent several months in Ireland in 1771, as a guest of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Viscount Townshend, and undertook a number of portrait commissions there. Her notable Irish portraits include those of Philip Tisdall, the Attorney General for Ireland, and his wife Mary, who acted as her patron, and of Henry Loftus, 1st Earl of Ely and his family, including his niece Dorothea Monroe, the most admired Irish beauty of her time. It appears that among her circle of friends was Jean-Paul Marat, then living in London and practising medicine, with whom she may have had an affair. • Illustration — Nathaniel Hone's painting The Conjuror (1775), satirizing Sir Joshua Reynolds and alluding to a romance with the younger Angelica Kauffman. Her friendship with Reynolds was criticized in 1775 by fellow Academician Nathaniel Hone, who courted controversy in 1775 with his satirical picture The Conjurer. It was seen to attack the fashion for Italian Renaissance art and to ridicule Sir Joshua Reynolds, leading the Royal Academy to reject the painting. It also originally included a nude caricature of Kauffman in the top left corner, which he painted out after she complained to the academy. The combination of a little girl and an old man has also been seen as symbolic of Kauffman and Reynolds's closeness, age difference, and rumoured affair. From 1769 until 1782, Kauffman was an annual exhibitor with the Royal Academy, sending sometimes as many as seven pictures, generally on classical or allegoric subjects. One of the most notable was Leonardo expiring in the Arms of Francis the First (1778). • Illustration — Design (1778–80), oil on canvas, 126 × 148.5 cm. Royal Academy of Arts, London. In 1773, she was appointed by the Academy with others to decorate St Paul's Cathedral, a scheme that was never carried out, and, later, with Biagio Rebecca, painted the ceiling of the Academy's Council Room at Somerset House. The work she created here between 1778 and 1780 are perhaps her greatest and most recognizable: a series of paintings, titled The Elements of Art, depicting Invention, Design, Composition, and Coloring. Kauffman's allegorical paintings represent the principles of academic art theory. Giuseppe Marc'Antonio Baretti, known as Joseph in England, celebrated the series of paintings as "executed with all that grace, elegance and accuracy which distinguish the best productions of this Extraordinary lady." The Council Room, members of the academy, and depictions of Kauffman's Design and Composition can be seen in Henry Singleton's painting, The Royal Academicians in General Assembly (1795).

• Illustration — The Sorrow of Telemachus (1783), oil on canvas, 83.2 x 114.3 cm. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York • Illustration — Telemachus and the Nymphs of Calypso (1782), oil on canvas, 82.6 x 112.4 cm., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York • Illustration — The Triumph of Venus with the Three Graces While Kauffman produced portraits, and self-portraits, she identified herself primarily as a history painter, an unusual designation for a woman artist in the 18th century. History painting was considered the most elite and lucrative category in academic painting during this time period and, under the direction of Sir Joshua Reynolds, the Royal Academy made a strong effort to promote it to a native audience more interested in commissioning and buying portraits and landscapes. Despite Kauffman's popularity in British society and her success there as an artist, she was disappointed by the relative apathy of the British towards history painting. Ultimately, she left Britain for Rome, where history painting was better established, held in higher esteem and patronized. History painting, as defined in academic art theory, was classified as the most elevated category. Its subject matter was the representation of human actions based on themes from history, mythology, literature, and scripture. This required extensive learning in biblical and Classical literature, knowledge of art theory and practical training that included the study of anatomy from the male nude. Most women were denied access to such training, especially the opportunity to draw from nude models; yet Kauffman managed to cross the gender boundary. She studied works from artists including Titian, Raphael, Correggio, Domenichino, and Guido Reni, and learned to depict male anatomy through copying drawings, engravings and plaster casts. This can be seen in depictions of Kauffman, such as her painting titled Design and a portrait by Nathaniel Dance. The male figures in her artworks are seen as being more feminine than most painters would choose to display, which may be a result of her lack of formal training in male anatomy.

• Illustration — Self-Portrait Hesitating Between Painting and Music (1794). oil on canvas, 147 x: 216 cm. Nostell Priory, West Yorkshire In 1781, after her first husband's death (she had long been separated from him), she married Antonio Zucchi (1726–1795), a Venetian artist then resident in England. Shortly afterwards, she retired to Rome, where she befriended, among others, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe; yet, always restive, she wanted to do more and lived for another 25 years with much of her old prestige intact. In 1782, Kauffman's father died, as did her husband in 1795. In 1794, she painted, Self-Portrait Hesitating Between Painting and Music, in which she emphasises the difficult choice she had faced in choosing painting as her sole career, in dedication to her mother's death. She continued at intervals to contribute to the Royal Academy in London, her last exhibit being in 1797. After this, she produced little, and in 1807 she died in Rome, being honoured with a splendid funeral under the direction of Canova. The entire Academy of St Luke, with numerous ecclesiastics and virtuosi, followed her to her tomb in Sant'Andrea delle Fratte, and, as at the burial of Raphael, two of her best pictures were carried in procession.

• Illustration — The Angelika Kauffmann Museum in Schwarzenberg (Vorarlberg, Austria) The Angelika Kauffmann Museum in Schwarzenberg, Vorarlberg (Austria) was established in 2007. This location is in the same area that her father called home. The annually changing exhibitions focus on different aspects and themes of her artistic work. In the 2019 exhibition Angelika Kauffmann – Unknown Treasures from Vorarlberg Private Collections, many of her paintings were shown to the public for the first time, as a large proportion of her oeuvre is owned by private collectors. The museum is housed in the so-called "Kleberhaus", an old farmhouse (1556) in the typical architectural style of the region.

• Illustration — Penelope at Her Loom (1764), oil on canvas, Brighton Pavilion • Illustration — Vortigern and Rowena (1770), Saltram House • Illustration — Penelope Waken by Eurykleia (1772), oil on canvas, dimensions unknown, vorarlberg museum, Bregenz • Illustration — Ariadne Abandoned by Theseus (1774), oil on canvas, 63.8 x 90.9 cm., Museum of Fine Arts, Houston • Illustration — Zeuxis Selecting Models for His Painting of Helen of Troy (c. 1778), oil on canvas, dimensions unknown, Annmary Brown Memorial Library, Brown University, Rhode Island • Illustration — The Judgment of Paris (c. 1781), oil on canvas, 80 x 100.9 cm., Museo de Arte de Ponce, Puerto Rico • Illustration — Ariadne left by Theseus (before 1782), oil on canvas, 88 x 70.5 cm., Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden • Illustration — Pliny the Younger and His Mother at Miseno (1785), oil on canvas, 103 x 127.5 cm., Princeton University Art Museum, New Jersey • Illustration — Cornelia, Mother of the Gracchi, Pointing to her Children as Her Treasures (1785), oil on canvas, 101.6 x 127 cm., Virginia Museum of Fine Arts • Illustration — Circe Enticing Ulysses (1786), oil on canvas, dimension and collection unknown • Illustration — Virgil reading the Aeneid to Augustus and Octavia (1788), oil on canvas, 123 x 159 cm, Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg • Illustration — Valentine Rescues Silvia from The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1789), oil on canvas, 61 3/4 in. x 87 in. (156.8 cm x 221 cm), Davis Museum at Wellesley College, Massachusetts • Illustration — Erato, the Muse of Lyric Poetry with a Putto or Sappho Inspired by Love (date unknown), oil on canvas, 111.8 x: 94 cm., private collection • Illustration — Venus Induces Helen to Fall in Love with Paris (1790), oil on canvas, 102 x 127.5 cm., Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg • Illustration — Agrippina Mourns the Urn of Germanicus (1793), oil on canvas, Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf • Illustration — Holy Family with an angel, before 1807, Museum of John Paul II Collection

• Illustration — Portrait of Winckelmann (1764), oil on canvas • Illustration — Lady Georgiana Spencer, Henrietta Spencer and George Viscount Althorp (c. 1766), oil on canvas, 113.6 x 144.8 cm., private collection • Illustration — Sir Joshua Reynolds (1767), oil on canvas, 127 x 101.5 cm., National Trust, Saltram House • Illustration — Portrait of a Woman as a Vestal Virgin (1770s), oil on canvas, 60 x 41 cm., Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid • Illustration — The Family of the Earl of Gower (1772), oil on canvas, 150.4 x 208.2 cm., National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C. • Illustration — Portrait of Eleanor, Countess of Lauderdale (c. 1780), oil on canvas, 76.2 x 63.5 mm., Museum of Fine Arts, Houston • Illustration — Portrait of Sarah Harrop (Mrs. Bates) as a Muse (1780–81), oil on canvas, 142 x 121 cm., Princeton University Art Museum, New Jersey • Illustration — Antonio Zucchi [Kauffman's husband] (1781), oil on canvas, 76 x 63 cm., private collection • Illustration — Portrait of Ferdinand IV of Naples, and his Family (1783), oil on canvas, 310 x 426 cm., Museo di Capodimonte, Naples • Illustration — Prince Henry Lubomirski As Amor (1786), oil on canvas, Borys Voznytsky Lviv National Art Gallery, Ukraine • Illustration — Baroness of Krüdener and Her Son Paul (1787), oil on canvas, dimensions unknown, Musée du Louvre-Lens • Illustration — Goethe [at 38 years] (1787), oil on canvas, 64 x 52 cm., Goethe-Nationalmuseum, Weimar • Illustration — Ellis Cornelia Knight (1793), oil on canvas, 96 x 80 cm., Manchester Art Gallery • Illustration — Anna von Escher van Muralt (c. 1800), oil on canvas, 110 x 86 cm., Museo del Prado, Madrid • Illustration — Portrait of Ludwig, Crown Prince of Bavaria (1807), oil on canvas, 224.6 x 146.8 cm., Neue Pinakothek, Munich

• Illustration — The Paintress of Macaroni's, believed to be a satire of Kauffman. London: Printed for Carington Bowles, 13 April 1772. • Illustration — From The European Magazine and London Review • Illustration — Self-Portrait as Imitatio (1771), pencil • Illustration — Scene from the 1802 première in Weimar of Goethe's Iphigenia in Tauris, with Goethe himself as Orestes in the centre. • Illustration — The Painter Angelika Kauffmann (1808), by Johann Peter Kauffmann, marble, 66,9 x 35,2 x 35 cm., Neue Pinakothek, Munich • Illustration — Portrait of Emma Hamilton (1791), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York • Illustration — Design for a Fan (1775), Yale Center for British Art

• Retrospektive Angelika Kauffmann (270 works, c. 450 ill.), Düsseldorf, Kunstmuseum (15 November 1998 – 24 January 1999); München, Haus der Kunst (5 February – 18 April 1999); Chur, Bündner Kunstmuseum (8 May – 11 July 1999). • Angelica Kauffman: Unknown Treasures from Vorarlberg Private Collections, concurrent exhibitions at the Vorarlberg Museum (June 15 – October 6, 2019) and the Angelika Kauffmann Museum, Schwarzenberg, Austria (June 16 – November 3, 2019). • Angelica Kauffman, Royal Academy, London, 1 March – 30 June 2024

The authorities additionally record the headings A. Kauffmann, Maria Anna Angelica Catharina Kaufmann, Anjelica Kauffman and Angelique Kauffman. Her recorded language was German. Her recorded confession was Catholicism. She was the child of Joseph Johann Kauffmann and Cleophea Lutz. She married Antonio Zucchi and Frederick de Horn. Other recorded relations include Rudolf-Alois Kauffmann.

Angelica Kauffmann is recorded as painter, printmaker, artist and visual artist.