Her Impact
Angelica Kauffmann was a woman born with a talent which was evident from an early age, a talent which was only encouraged further by her father. However, the emotion within Kauffmann’s paintings as well as the atmosphere they ooze out was due to one extremely significant moment in her life, the death of her mother. Cleophea Lutz, her mother, passed away on March first 1757 while her family was still living in Milan, Italy.
Cleophea Lutz’s death took an emotional toll on her daughter, and without her mother present to restrain her, Angelica developed a large ego, which, according to Victoria Manners, made her a difficult young woman. This large ego, inflated by the lack of a proper mother figure in her life, influenced all of her works after her mother’s death and can be seen more clearly her self portrait of 1787. The portrait was created with the purpose of representing herself in the famous grand-ducal collection of artists’ self-portraits in the Uffizi, however the painting highly idealizes Kauffman by way of making her look younger through large features and a tender expression.
This ego expanded beyond her egotistical self portraits and into her commissioned portraits in which many of Kauffmann’s depictions/interpretations of male figures were questioned by british critics who noted the effeminacy of Kauffman's male figures or lewdly questioned the extent of her direct knowledge of male anatomy. These effeminate interpretations of men was (much like her career as a history painter) inspiring to women as it gave them a sense of power over men as the effeminacy happened most often to depictions of strong and powerful men like that of her painting titled “Venus convinces Helen to go with Paris” painted in 1790, in where the mythological man named Paris (who, in another story, fatally wounds the undefeated Achilles with an arrow in the heel) has the same tenderness in his skin and general facial structure as that of Venus and Helen.
Venus convinces Helen to go with Paris
With her natural born talent for painting and vast connections with people of influence, Angelica Kauffmann was destined for success. Besides painting portraits and landscapes of and for numerous important historical figures, Kauffmann managed to achieve two things that during her sixty-six years of living were seen as impossible for a woman. For one, an idealized self portrait which symbolized the triumph of female creativity through the depiction of the mythological competition for the control of Attica won by Minerva against Neptune was exhibited side by side with the ranks of men.
This achievement was especially important to Kauffmann, as her painting was positioned so near to the great artist-hero Michelangelo whom was one of the Old Masters she had studied long ago in her youth, and again women of the time as it showed both men and women that women were capable of achieving the same position of great artist (for example) as men were.
The second achievement deemed impossible, was her designation as one of only six artists designated as history painters, among the original thirty-six Founding Members of the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1768 as well as being one of the only two women invited to become Founder Members.
This invitation, which Kauffmann accepted graciously, was another crowning achievement for not only Kauffmann but for the population of women in her lifetime as she had became a symbol of the women rights movement developing within their hearts and minds with her capability to come out of a poor family missing a mother too a Founder Member of a prestigious art school while having a career of high nobility.