Maria Anna Catherina Angelica Kauffmann was born at Chur in the Grisons, Switzerland in 1741. She was the daughter of Johann Joseph Kauffmann, a successful decorative painter, who gave her lessons in both music and visual art. She lived in Italy for three years as a child, painting precociously. When she was about twelve, the Bishop of Como summoned her to paint his portrait and she came under the protection of Francis III D’Este, Duke of Modena and Governor of Milan. She subsequently secured a further ecclesiastical commission from Cardinal Roth in Constance. Kauffmann first visited Italy in 1754, taking in Milan, Rome, Bologna, and Venice. After helping to decorate a church at Schwarzenberg, she went to Italy again in 1760 and spent most of the next five years there, studying art in Florence, Rome and Naples. She painted the portrait of the German art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-68) and was no doubt strongly influenced by his neo-classicism. It was in Italy that Kauffmann first encountered the English. That was the age of the Grand Tour, of the discovery of ancient Roman painting, and the reinterpretation of antique Greek and Roman sources, narratives and styles known as neo-classicism. However, then, like today, not all English tourists were susceptible to the lure of high culture. John Damer, whose aristocratic wife was painted by Kauffman, didn’t bother with admiring the paintings in the Uffizi, but laid bets with his companion as to who could hop to the end of the gallery first. Kauffmann arrived in London in 1766 at the age of 25 with reputation as a celebrated artist with a head for business, as well as a beauty, who inspired adoration from her clients. A word was coined to describe the condition of people stricken with her. ‘The whole world’, it was said, ‘is Angelicamad.’ Goethe called her an ‘unbelievable’ and ‘massive’ talent. One of her first sitters was the actor David Garrick. On the staircase at Saltram House in Plymouth hangs her 1767 portrait of Sir Joshua Reynolds. In it, she subtly captured his fleeting anxiety. Her own self-portrait hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in London. The painting is bathed in a warm, soft light. Her skin appears translucent and her clothing softly echoes the folds and curls of her tumbling hair. Distinctly feminine and seductive, the painting reinforces the determination of the woman artist rather than detracting from it, in the way that she presents herself with the tools of her trade. She became the toast of Georgian England, captivating society with her portraits, mythological scenes and decorative compositions. Kauffmann worked with the designer Robert Adam providing painted roundels for his neoclassical houses, but her greatest ambition was to be a history painter, the high, narrative mode of painting that 18th-century criticism held to be the noblest genre. Kauffmann’s histories put women at the centre of events. They include Venus Appearing to Aeneas and Cleopatra Mourning at Mark Antony’s Tomb. Her decorative history pieces were widely engraved and used in the manufacture of objets d’art. Never far from controversy, Kauffman was often the subject of malicious gossip and was rumoured to be a lover of Sir Joshua Reynolds. She contracted an ill-advised marriage with the bogus aristocrat Count Frederick de Horn and, in terror for her reputation, hastily extricated herself from it. Commissions for work by fashionable society did not falter however, and her career continued to flourish. Kauffmann has a strong association with Kenwood House through her second husband, Antonio Zucchi, who painted the decorative ceilings of the Entrance Hall and the Adam Library. In time, she became the first major internationally recognised woman painter and was one of only two female founding members of the Royal Academy in 1768. In Zoffany’s group portrait The Members of the Royal Academy, he depicted the Academicians drawing a nude male model. To protect their modesty, both Kauffmann and Mary Moser (1744-1819) were excluded, except for their portraits hanging on the wall. Zoffany’s picture captures both her achievement and what she had to overcome. Her Portrait of a Lady and Hector Taking Leave of Andromache may both be found in the collection of the Tate in London. Her half-length portrait of John Murray may be found in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. She retired to Rome with Zucchi in the early 1780s and burned most of her papers before she died in 1807. Her Literature and Painting may be seen above.