ANGELICA KAUFFMAN

Amor and Psyche,
1792
Vorarlberger
Landesmuseum,
Bregenz
The opening of the Angelica Kauffman exhibition, a display spectacular
in scope and quality, heralds a new era for the Vorarlberger Landesmuseum.
Marking the 200 th anniversary of her death on 5 November
2007, the display will explore the timeliness of this exceptional artist,
whose radiance is unbroken till today. Angelica Kauffman is in many
ways modern, her life as “a strong woman” unusual to this day. Many
terms have been used for this artist. Some called her “perhaps the most
cultivated woman in Europe”, others the “tenth muse of Rome”. For
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, she was “a woman of immense talent”.
But who really was she? This question is explored in this jubilee
exhibition. The exhibition provides an opportunity to appraise the
artistic development of Angelica Kauffman, a citizen of the world, in
connection to her remarkable life as a woman.
Born in Chur in 1741 as a daughter of a travelling artist from Schwarzenberg,
Angelica Kauffman became famous in London and Rome. Her extraordinary
career was a sensation in the 18th century and even today can
be considered remarkable. Despite her ordinary background, Angelica
Kauffman rose to become a celebrity and kept close contact to the
crowned heads of state throughout Europe. Her portraits of famous
contemporaries made Angelica Kauffman popular in all of Europe. Her
self-portraits testify to the self-dramatization of this fascinating woman.
Angelica Kauffman was in the best sense of the word a cosmopolitan
and European, long before there was a united Europe. Her life provides
material for numerous novels: the affairs surrounding her marriage
to a swindler, her friendship with Goethe, and her salon in Rome
which served as a meeting point for the intellectual prominence. When
she died in Rome on November 5, 1807, Rome witnessed the most
magnificent funeral procession since Raphael’s death. This jubilee
exhibition in the Angelica Kauffman Festival Year 2007 is an exhibition
at two venues: The presentation in the Vorarlberger Landesmuseum
shows a compendium of her life and works; in the new Angelica
Kauffman Museum in Schwarzenberg, the main emphasis is placed
on her relationship to her adopted home in the Bregenzerwald.
Curator: Tobias G. Natter
The first printed
Angelica Kauffman
Biography, 1810
Private collection, Schwarzenberg
Angelika Kauffmann machte als Frau in ihrer Zeit eine außergewöhnliche
Karriere. Die Künstlerin mit Wurzeln im Bregenzerwald begeisterte schon
die Zeitgenossen durch ihr Werk und faszinierte mit ihrer Lebensgeschichte.
Das Vorarlberger Landesmuseum in Bregenz baute im Laufe
seiner 150-jährigen Geschichte die umfangreichste Angelika-Kauffmann-
Sammlung weltweit auf.
ANGELICA KAUFFMAN
King Ferdinand IV. of Sicily and
his Family, 1783
The Princely Collections of
Liechtenstein, Vaduz-Vienna
2007
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