Maria Anna Angelika Kauffmann, usually known in English as Angelica Kauffman, was a Swiss Neoclassical painter who had a successful career in London and Rome. Remembered primarily as a history painter, Kauffmann was a skilled portraitist, landscape and decoration painter. She was, along with Mary Moser, one of two female painters among the founding members of the Royal Academy in London in 1768.
Self-portrait by Kauffman, 1770–75
Detail of Tragedy and Comedy, painted in Rome in 1791 (National Museum in Warsaw). Harmonious and powerful colours and the soft-brushed, multi-layered style of English portraitists, Sir Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough, are typical for Kauffmann's paintings.
Christ and the Samaritan Woman at the Well (1795), oil on canvas, 123.5 x 158.5 cm., Neue Pinakothek, Munich
David Garrick (1764), oil on canvas, 84 x 69 cm., Burghley House, Lincolnshire
Neoclassicism, also spelled Neo-classicism, emerged as a Western cultural movement in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that drew inspiration from the art and culture of classical antiquity. Neoclassicism was born in Rome, largely due to the writings of Johann Joachim Winckelmann during the rediscovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Its popularity expanded throughout Europe as a generation of European art students finished their Grand Tour and returned from Italy to their home countries with newly rediscovered Greco-Roman ideals. The main Neoclassical movement coincided with the 18th-century Age of Enlightenment, and continued into the early 19th century, eventually competing with Romanticism. In architecture, the style endured throughout the 19th, 20th, and into the 21st century.
Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss; by Antonio Canova; 1787; marble; 155 cm × 168 cm; Louvre
Charles Towneley in his sculpture gallery; by Johann Zoffany; 1782; oil on canvas; height: 127 cm, width: 102 cm; Towneley Hall Art Gallery and Museum, Burnley, UK
Johann Joachim Winckelmann, often called "the father of archaeology"
Anton Raphael Mengs; Judgement of Paris; circa 1757; oil on canvas; height: 226 cm, width: 295 cm, bought by Catherine the Great from the studio; Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia