Verrückt nach Angelika Kauffmann by Bettina Baumgärtel

Given the significance of the exhibition, it is a shame that as a result of the covid-19 lockdown it could not travel to its second venue, the Royal Academy of Arts, London. This exhibition presents the results of the research carried out over many years by its curator, Bettina Baumgärtel, director of the Angelika Kauffmann Research Project (AKRP).(1) In 1998–99 Baumgärtel curated an important Kauffman retrospective that travelled from Düsseldorf to Munich and Chur and was accompanied by a substantial catalogue.(2) Whereas that exhibition presented 271 works by Kauffman in order to convince both the art world and scholars of her outstanding artistic achievement, the present exhibition, designed in part to present Kauffman as a leading history painter, a trend-setting portraitist and a champion of a new ideal of masculinity, presents a judiciously pruned selection of 110 of her finest works.(3) The choice, which reflects the research made for Baumgärtel’s forthcoming catalogue raisonné of Kauffman, includes a number of newly identified works, such as A pleasant pasttime – ludit amabiliter (before 1779 private collection no.26), a portrait of Catharina Odescalchi (1783 private collection no.46) and the large-scale Servius Tullius as a child asleep beneath the Miraculous Flame (1785 Scientific- Research Museum of the Academy of Arts of Russia, St Petersburg no.73).

In 1781 she returned to Rome, where her fame and wealth grew. Between 17 she travelled through Italy before settling in London in 1766, where she opened a studio and embarked on a successful career.

Probably the best-known female artist of the eighteenth century, Angelica Kauffman (1741–1807) was born in the Swiss city of Chur, where she was considered a child prodigy.

Verrückt nach Angelika Kauffmann by Bettina Baumgärtel