Angelica Kauffman (1741-1807)
Edited by Bettina Baumgärtel
Angelica Kauffman (1741-1807) was one of the most famous and internationally celebrated artists of the 18th century. The saying „The whole world is angelicamad“ is still currently. Miss Angel was admired from London, Dublin, Florence, Rome and Naples, Paris, Warsaw and St. Petersburg, Weimar to Vienna and she was swarmed as “Female Raphael of the Arts”. She had a double talent for music and Painting, was a very successful businesswoman and she was friend with the celebrities of her time. Winckelmann’s portrait opened her doors, Goethe called her “the best being of the world. It has no concept of such a talent.” Herder described her as “perhaps the most highly cultured woman in Europe”. She was supported by Batoni and Reynolds, and attracted a fashionable aristocratic clientele, emperors and kings of Europe as Catherine II of Russia, Joseph II of Austria, Maria Karoline of Naples, Stanislaus II Poniatowski of Poland or Ludwig I of Bavaria.
Angelica Kauffman left behind an oeuvre of an estimated 800 oil paintings on canvas or copper, 13 frescos, some 400 drawings, a small number of early pastels, as well as 41 etchings. Many wall, ceiling and mantle decorations in English Historic Houses are erroneously attributed to her; what is more, she did not paint on wood, ivory or porcelain. More than 600 prints were made after her works (dotted manner, mezzotint, etchings, engravings, lithographs, wood engravings, photogravures, phototypes, etc.) as well as innumerable copies, imitations and forgeries, a circumstance which serves as an indication of her continued popularity.
If you are a fan of Angelica Kauffman and want to know more about her life and pictures, the AKRP-Team can give you answers to your questions.
The AKRP-Team explains Kauffman’s paintings, prints and drawings, giving an exciting insight into the research for the catalogue raisonné…
AKRP
The Angelica Kauffman Research Project – AKRP is an interdisciplinary research project of international and intercultural significance. It was initiated in 1990 under the direction of Bettina Baumgärtel, PhD [bettina-baumgaertel.com] and is the result of her longstanding research on the life and work of the artist Angelica Kauffman (1741–1807). Baumgärtel has made a name for herself internationally as an expert on Kauffman. Within the framework of the project, the conservator Inken M. Holubec supervises the technological and scientific investigations. Gabriele Ewenz, PhD, literary scholar and archivist, oversees the corpus of source texts by and about Angelica Kauffman.
The aim of the Angelica Kauffman Research Project – AKRP is to sketch an overall picture of the life and work of this artist with a view to the places where she worked and the art and culture of her time. The results of the research are to be made available for use by a wide public through analog and digital media.
The Angelica Kauffman Research Project – AKRP aims to make a contribution to the research and mediation of art and culture in the age of the Enlightenment. It is conceived as part of the interdisciplinary research on the European Enlightenment in the eighteenth century, and of the art and culture of Neoclassicism.
The core of the project is the Kritische Werkverzeichnis Angelika Kauffmann / Catalogue Raisonné Angelica Kauffman of the paintings, drawings and prints of Angelica Kauffmann, to be published for the first time in its entirety in several volumes. It will comprise more than two thousand works by and after Angelica Kauffmann belonging to public and private collections in Europe, including Russia, the U.S. and other countries.
Citation note:
Baumgärtel, Bettina: Angelica Kauffman, in: Angelika Kauffmann Research Project – online, https://www.angelika-kauffmann.de/en/akrp-home-2/ [add date of access here]