Art Gallery

Kauffmann, Angelica (1741 - 1807), taught by her father, a Vorarlberg painter, Angelica Kauffmann already painted remarkable pastel portraits at the early age of 15. Even at the age of eleven, she earned admiring praise for her portrait of Bischop Nevroni and although she would later concentrate on allegorical, antique, historical and religious themes in her paintings, the portrait was to remain the driving force behind her succes throughout her life. She received so many commissions that her painting tended to become rather routine, taking on an increasing smoothness and superficial appeal at the expense of a more distinctive style. Goethe, whose portrait she painted in 1787 merely commented laconically:"A fine looking youth, but not a trace of me."

On extensive Italian travels she developed a thorough knowledge by copying the old masters. She became a member of the Academies of Florence and Rome, and her meeting with Johann Joachim Winckelmann was decisive in pointing her in the Classical direction. From 1766 she lived in London for 15 years, becoming a Royal Academician and working with the architect Robert Adam, amongst others. On her return to Rome she became the centre of a salon which Goethe and Herder attended. Her portraits owe much to Reynolds and Mengs, while her Classical religious and mythological pictures were based on the study of Antiquity seen with the eyes of Winckelmann.