Maria Anna Angelika Kauffmann RA (/ˈkaʊfmən/ KOWF-mən; 30 October 1741 – 5 November 1807), usually known in English as Angelica Kauffman,[a] was a Swiss Neoclassical painter who had a successful career in London and Rome.

[7] Her father, Joseph Johann Kauffmann (1707–1782), was a relatively poor man but a skilled Austrian muralist and painter, who was often travelling for his work.

Angelica, a child prodigy, rapidly acquired four languages from her mother, Cleophea Lutz (1717–1757): German, Italian, French and English.

She quickly chose art as a Catholic priest told her that the opera was a dangerous place filled with "seedy people.

Writing from Rome in August 1764 to his friend Franke, Winckelmann refers to her popularity; she was then painting his picture, a half-length; of which she also made an etching.

She spoke Italian as well as German, he says, and expressed herself with facility in French and English – one result of the last-named accomplishment being that she became a popular portraitist for British visitors to Rome.

One of the first pieces she completed in London was a portrait of David Garrick, exhibited in the year of her arrival at "Mr Moreing's great room in Maiden Lane."

In 1767 Kauffman was seduced by an imposter going under the name Count Frederick de Horn, whom she married, but they were separated the following year.

In its first catalogue of 1769, she appears with "R.A." after her name (an honour she shared with one other woman, Mary Moser); and she contributed the Interview of Hector and Andromache, and three other classical compositions.

[17][b] Her friendship with Reynolds was criticized in 1775 by fellow Academician Nathaniel Hone, who courted controversy in 1775 with his satirical picture The Conjurer.

[c] It was seen to attack the fashion for Italian Renaissance art and to ridicule Sir Joshua Reynolds, leading the Royal Academy to reject the painting.

It also originally included a nude caricature of Kauffman in the top left corner, which he painted out after she complained to the academy.

While Kauffman produced portraits, and self-portraits, she identified herself primarily as a history painter, an unusual designation for a woman artist in the 18th century.

History painting was considered the most elite and lucrative category in academic painting during this time period and, under the direction of Sir Joshua Reynolds, the Royal Academy made a strong effort to promote it to a native audience more interested in commissioning and buying portraits and landscapes.

This required extensive learning in biblical and Classical literature, knowledge of art theory and practical training that included the study of anatomy from the male nude.

Most women were denied access to such training, especially the opportunity to draw from nude models; yet Kauffman managed to cross the gender boundary.

Shortly afterwards she retired to Rome, where she befriended, among others, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe; yet, always restive, she wanted to do more and lived for another 25 years with much of her old prestige intact.

The entire Academy of St Luke, with numerous ecclesiastics and virtuosi, followed her to her tomb in Sant'Andrea delle Fratte, and, as at the burial of Raphael, two of her best pictures were carried in procession.

[21][26] There were other pictures by her in Paris, at Dresden, in the Hermitage at St Petersburg, in the Alte Pinakothek at Munich, in Kadriorg Palace, Tallinn (Estonia)[21][unreliable source?

][11] The book was the basis of a romance by Léon de Wailly (1838), and it prompted the novel contributed by Anne Isabella Thackeray to the Cornhill Magazine in 1875 entitled Miss Angel.

The novelist Miranda Miller published a novel Angelica, Paintress of Minds, which purports to be an autobiography written during Kauffman's last days in Rome.