Maria Anna Angelica Catharina Kauffmann, better known as Angelika Kauffmann, was born in Chur, Switzerland. Her father Johann Kauffmann was a portrait and fresco painter, and the family soon moved to Como, where her father's most important clients, who would later become her own, were located. The girl was considered a child prodigy from an early age, and was taught painting, music and languages. She painted her first self-portrait at the age of 12, and spent a childhood surrounded by wealth and pomp.
After the death of her mother, she lived with her father in Vorarlberg, where the two were commissioned to redesign the church after a fire. Following the example of the Italian artist Giovanni Battista Piazzetta she painted figures of the apostles, these were to remain her only wall paintings. On commission trips she painted portraits of bishops, counts and ordinary citizens, thus financing her studies of ancient and Renaissance art in Italy. In Florence she received a diploma from the Accademia del disegno (Academy of Drawing). She became famous for her portrait of Johann Winckelmann, founder of scientific archaeology and art history. She painted portraits of other celebrities, including the actor David Garrick and the most influential English painter of the 18th century, Sir Joshua Reynolds. In 1767 she fell for a marriage swindler who made off with all her possessions - the marriage was later declared invalid. Kauffmann was one of the few women appointed by the king as founding members of the Royal Academy. Her father married her to the Italian classicist painter Antonio Zucchi, who also became her patron and with whom she moved to Rome. There she was in the company of artists, crown princes, aristocrats and even met Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, for whose "Iphigenia" she made illustrations. In 1792 she painted her most famous work "Self-Portrait at the Crossroads between Music and Painting", after which she devoted herself mainly to religious themes.
She died in Rome, and a bust of her was erected in the Pantheon in her honour. The Italian sculptor and most admired artist of Classicism, Antonio Canova, organized a pompous funeral procession on her death, biographies were published years later. This was followed by a portrait of her on the Hundred Schilling note, a stamp of one of her paintings in Liechtenstein, and in her adopted home in Vorarlberg the Angelika Kauffmann Museum was established. Kauffmann will always retain an important position in the art world for her portraits and history paintings in the style of Rococo and Classicism and because of her outstanding role as a woman in art in a male-dominated world. © Meisterdrucke
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Maria Anna Angelica Catharina Kauffmann, better known as Angelika Kauffmann, was born in Chur, Switzerland. Her father Johann Kauffmann was a portrait and fresco painter, and the family soon moved to Como, where her father's most important clients, who would later become her own, were located. The girl was considered a child prodigy from an early age, and was taught painting, music and languages. She painted her first self-portrait at the age of 12, and spent a childhood surrounded by wealth and pomp.
After the death of her mother, she lived with her father in Vorarlberg, where the two were commissioned to redesign the church after a fire. Following the example of the Italian artist Giovanni Battista Piazzetta she painted figures of the apostles, these were to remain her only wall paintings. On commission trips she painted portraits of bishops, counts and ordinary citizens, thus financing her studies of ancient and Renaissance art in Italy. In Florence she received a diploma from the Accademia del disegno (Academy of Drawing). She became famous for her portrait of Johann Winckelmann, founder of scientific archaeology and art history. She painted portraits of other celebrities, including the actor David Garrick and the most influential English painter of the 18th century, Sir Joshua Reynolds. In 1767 she fell for a marriage swindler who made off with all her possessions - the marriage was later declared invalid. Kauffmann was one of the few women appointed by the king as founding members of the Royal Academy. Her father married her to the Italian classicist painter Antonio Zucchi, who also became her patron and with whom she moved to Rome. There she was in the company of artists, crown princes, aristocrats and even met Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, for whose "Iphigenia" she made illustrations. In 1792 she painted her most famous work "Self-Portrait at the Crossroads between Music and Painting", after which she devoted herself mainly to religious themes.
She died in Rome, and a bust of her was erected in the Pantheon in her honour. The Italian sculptor and most admired artist of Classicism, Antonio Canova, organized a pompous funeral procession on her death, biographies were published years later. This was followed by a portrait of her on the Hundred Schilling note, a stamp of one of her paintings in Liechtenstein, and in her adopted home in Vorarlberg the Angelika Kauffmann Museum was established. Kauffmann will always retain an important position in the art world for her portraits and history paintings in the style of Rococo and Classicism and because of her outstanding role as a woman in art in a male-dominated world. © Meisterdrucke
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