She was a founding member of the British Royal Academy, one of London's most sought-after portraitists, and, by 1787, "the most famous and most successful living painter in Rome." These are just a few of the accomplishments of the Swiss-born artist Angelica Kauffman.

A child prodigy who was producing commissioned portraits in her early teens, Kauffman was trained by her father, the Swiss muralist Johann Joseph Kauffman. During the early 1760s Angelica Kauffman traveled through Switzerland, Austria, and Italy, working as her father's assistant. Thus, she had the rare opportunity for a woman to see and copy many works of ancient and Renaissance masters and to meet leaders of the popular new movement known as neoclassicism.

During a three-year stay in Italy Kauffman made her reputation as a painter of portraits; she also produced history paintings. Recognition of her accomplishments is indicated by her election to Rome's Academy of St. Luke in 1765. In 1766 Kauffman moved to London, where she achieved immediate success as a portraitist. Over the next 16 years she exhibited regularly at the prestigious Royal Academy and worked for a glittering array of aristocratic and royal patrons. A brief marriage to a man claiming to be the Count of Horn was aned in 1768. Although this unfortunate experience could easily have derailed her career, Kauffman remained a prolific and highly successful artist.

In 1781 Kauffman married the painter Antonio Zucchi, who succeeded her father as her business manager. One year later the couple settled permanently in Rome, where Kauffman's studio became a focal point for that city's cultural life. By the time of her death she had achieved such renown that her funeral was directed by the prominent neoclassical sculptor Antonio Canova, who based it on the funeral of the Renaissance master Raphael.

1 Ann Sutherland Harris and Linda Nochlin, Women Artists: 1550-1950 (Los Angeles County Museum of Art. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976), 176.