Angelica Kauffman’s Self-portrait with a bust of Minerva can be read as a fairly straightforward example of the artist shaping her own image as an elegant and cultured figure. Further layers of significance emerge, however, when it is read in the context of a series of portraits by Kauffman and Joshua Reynolds.
These are: Kauffman’s Portrait of Joshua Reynolds (1767; Saltram House, Devon); Reynolds’ Portrait of Angelica Kauffman (various versions e.g. https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-1428892, known from the print by Bartolozzi); and Sir Joshua Reynolds’ Self-Portrait (c.1780; Royal Academy of Arts).
Introduced to each other in 1766, Kauffman and Reynolds rapidly established a strong rapport and agreed to paint each other’s portraits. The art historians Bettina Baumgärtel and Angela Rosenthal have explored subsequent instances of the two directly responding to each other’s work. One of the most notable is Reynold’s grand Self-Portrait for the Royal Academy which incorporates motifs from Kauffman’s 1767 portrait of him, in particular the cast of the bust of Michelangelo by Daniele da Volterra (c.1509–1566).
Kauffman’s Self-Portrait with a Bust of Minerva continues the visual conversation with Reynolds, reworking elements of his 1780 Self-Portrait and his portrait of her (which had recently been published as an engraving in 1780). As a woman, Kauffman had to navigate a much narrower set of visual conventions in portraying herself, however, and creatively adapt these features to fit her own work.
Mirroring Reynolds’ 1780 Self-Portrait, Kauffman places herself in the same pictorial space against a similarly plain background. Reynolds’ proudly presented himself in the robes of his honorary doctorate from Oxford University but there was no equivalent tradition of formal academic portraiture for women at this date. Kauffman instead adopted an image of aristocratic yet informal grandeur, wearing a white dress and a luxurious russet-coloured, fur-lined mantle. This, too, refers back to Reynolds who had painted her wearing very similar garb. While he showed the neckline of her dress draped across her shoulder, Kauffman covers both shoulders and ties her mantle firmly at the waist.
Her left arm, like Reynolds’, extends to the left side of the canvas. While he grasps a scroll and rests his hand on a pile of books, emphasising his intellect, Kauffman holds drawing instruments. This is a common motif in her self-portraiture, as Bettina Baumgärtel has shown, and seems to refer to the concept of ‘Disegno’ – the crucial role of drawing in both the physical and intellectual development of any artwork. It is therefore a fitting – if more subtle – counterpart to Reynolds’s statement of academic authority. His portrait of Kauffman shows her holding up a drawing, as if for inspection, but in her painting, she wittily changed this to a more enigmatic closed portfolio with one leaf of paper peeking out.
Perhaps most significantly, Kauffman swapped the bust of Michelangelo for one of Minerva, goddess of wisdom and war. This exchange of a male bust for a female one was an apt conceit for Kauffman (who also featured images of Minerva in her portraits of aristocratic and learned women), but it also accentuates the lack of an equivalent revered woman artist in the canon. The bust depicted by Kauffman has been identified by Bettina Baumgärtel as the Townley Minerva (British Museum), which was excavated in 1782 (some accounts give 1783 and 1784) and shown to Kauffman at Castel Gondolfo by the art dealer Thomas Jenkins. A cast of a similar bust of Minerva was also presented to the Royal Academy in 1777 (if the record of this gift refers to the example still in the RA Collection), raising the possibility that the painting could be earlier in date, perhaps even produced before Kauffman left England in July 1781, and rendering her visual dialogue with Reynolds even more direct.
Self-Portrait with a Bust of Minerva was on display as part of Angelica Kauffman at the Royal Academy of Arts, from 1 March–30 June 2024 and Angelica Kauffman, Artist, Superwoman, Influencer, Kunstpalast Dusseldorf, from 30 January–20 September 2020.
Further Reading
Baumgärtel, Bettina. Angelica Kauffman, Dusseldorf and London, 2020, cat. No. 8, pp. 54–55 and earlier publications.
Baumgärtel, Bettina, and Annette Wickham. Angelica Kauffman. London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2024.
Rosenthal, Angela. Angelica Kauffman: Art and Sensibility. London: Paul Mellon Centre; Yale University Press, 2006, p. 247, and the chapter ‘The Image of Angelica’, pp. 223–283.
