When Europe went crazy for Angelica Kaufmann

Angelica Kaufman may not be a sacred name now, but it was once a sacred name. During her lifetime, she was a child prodigy. She was famous throughout Europe (“The whole world is crazy about Angelica,” exclaimed one of her contemporaries). She was one of only two female members of the Royal Academy (RA), founded in 1768 (the other being Mary Moser). She was the only female painter commissioned to paint ceilings in the 18th century. After her death, her funeral, organized by sculptor Antonio Canova, was modeled after Raphael’s funeral.

Architect Joseph Bonomi wrote in a letter to RA president Benjamin West that a “great woman” died in Rome “in confinement to her bed for about 20 days, always in the utmost spiritual tranquility.” He told the story of how it happened. He reported that he was “completely resigned” and “met her righteous death bravely.” In this she imitated the subjects of many paintings depicting the heroic, stoic, and admirable deeds of figures from the classical past, often women.

Kaufman’s understanding of her death was not limited to the manner in which she died. virtue of example – Case in point – this is the basis of much neoclassical art. One of the earliest scandals to hit the RA occurred in 1775 when the Irish painter Nathaniel Horne sent him a photograph that said: illusionist We will be exhibiting at our annual summer exhibition. The painting was a complex attack on Joshua Reynolds, the RA’s first president, who was a close friend of Kaufman’s — and, gossip says, more than just a friend.

In this work, Horn took aim at Reynolds’s assertion that the Old Masters were the only appropriate guide for modern painters, a belief with which Kaufman wholeheartedly agreed. The photo showed an old man, modeled after one of Reynolds’ favorite models, holding a cane, evoking the Renaissance and classic printmaking trends.Horn not only included the figures in Kaufman’s paintings hope The magician’s legs are draped suggestively, while the background depicts a group of naked figures frolicking in front of St. Paul’s Cathedral. Reynolds and Kaufman were planning the decoration of the cathedral at the time. One of the images depicts a woman wearing only black stockings, which Kaufman interpreted as a caricature of herself.

Unable to tolerate this vile sexual insult, she filed a complaint with the RA Council, asking for the painting to be removed to show “respect for the sexes it is their glory to uphold.” When her demands were granted, she threatened to resign and make the full story public, and only then was Ms. Horne instructed to delete her photos. Kaufman stood up for himself, but Horne got his revenge by making the painting the centerpiece of his own exhibition, giving further oxygen to the uproar.

Some of the paintings that brought her such fame, and made her worthy of Horne’s cynical ridicule, are now on display at the Royal Academy. Kaufman’s subject matter, especially her history paintings, are out of touch with contemporary moods: too decorative, too genteel, too moralistic, and based on sources no longer familiar. But she was in many ways a very modern artist. She can control her own image.

She was a painter who actively used her gender as a means of promoting herself. Her many self-portraits not only emphasize her femininity, but her soulful face was a useful tool in her period of sensibility. It also emphasizes her status as an artist. In some of her works she holds a pencil and in others she features herself, turning to her fables. She pretends to have designs inspired by poetry.

History painting (meaning scenes from the ancient, Biblical, and literary past) was the premier genre of art in the 18th century, and Kaufmann used it specifically to prove himself equal to other male artists. , we set out to overcome it. This work accounts for two-thirds of her paintings, depicting her portraits and lower forms, and provides her with both her income and her connections. But she specialized in depicting history from a female perspective, such as Dido, Circe, and Sappho, and responded to Jacques-Louis David’s masculine, muscular history with emotional ensembles such as . Cornelia, Gracchi’s mother and Pompey’s wife Julia faints (both 1785), as well Cleopatra decorating Mark Antony’s tomb (c. 1769-1770).

Works like this secured her international fame. In fact, she was born in Switzerland in 1741, but she traveled frequently to Italy, and then she spent 15 years of her life in England and Ireland, from 1766 to 1781. She then moved to Rome, where she lived until her death in 1807. Although she spoke her five languages, she claimed no nationality. : “My homeland is all the inhabited worlds,” she said. But in Rome, as in London, her home attracted a multilingual crowd of admirers and eye-catchers. Goethe was one of her many followers. “Her eye is very trained and her technical knowledge of her art is very good,” he wrote. “She also has great feelings for all things beautiful, true and kind.”

Prints depicting her work helped spread her fame, and she received wealthy patrons, including the British royal family, Catherine II of Russia, the Bourbon family of Naples, Stanislaus III Poniatowski of Poland, and Emperor Joseph II of Austria. obtained.

What happens if Kaufman defies convention by making women the central characters in his history paintings, even giving them a heroism usually reserved for men? Queen Eleanor sucks poison out of her husband Edward I’s wounds (1776), she was also an innovator in portraiture. She pioneered “attitude” portraiture, in which women are posed or in classic portraits. Emma Hamilton and the dancer and poet Teresa Bandettini appear as muses, as well as Queen Charlotte (who later posed George IV) and her self-portrait, which awakened her artistic genius.She herself dressed for the Duke of Tuscany All Antica As a vestal virgin.

She also painted more traditional portraits of, for example, Joshua Reynolds, actor David Garrick, and art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann, but they too have a convincing vibrancy. The portrait may have been a means to an end, a business card, a way to make money, but when she got tired of it, as Gainsborough did, she never showed it. Ta. Thanks to her portraits, she became one of the richest non-aristocratic women of her time. She was also unusual in that she continued to manage her finances even after she married her painter Antonio Zucchi in 1781 (her first marriage It was a marriage with a self-confident swindler (and it was short-lived).

This carefully selected exhibition shows, first and foremost, that it has nothing to do with gender. Kaufman was a true painter. Her brushstrokes have an unexpected fluidity and a sophisticated sense of color. Less dependent on the internet than many neoclassical painters, there is also a lightly worn frame of reference that covers painters from Lorenzo Lotto and Parmigianino to Charles Lebrun. Her friend Winckelmann advised her of “her noble simplicity and gentle grandeur,” but she could not express her paintings harshly.

In 1794, Kaufmann painted a monumental fable. Self-portrait at the intersection of musical art and painting art. It referenced both the myth of the Judgments of Hercules, where the protagonist had to choose between vice or virtue, and her own past. In her childhood, she excelled at singing and playing the clavichord, but by her teens she had to decide which path to take. This exhibition, which will be her first solo exhibition at RA in 250 years, is belated proof that she made the right choice.

angelica kaufman
Royal Academy of Arts, London W1
Held until June 30th

[See also: Rubens and body positivity]