Painting
Cornelia, Mother of the Gracchi
Angelica Kauffmann, c. 1785
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Neoclassical · chronological order 7
Oil on canvas painted around 1785 in Rome, where Kauffmann worked for clients from half of Europe. It is now in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
The scene is one of those Roman anecdotes the Neoclassical painters loved: a visitor shows off her jewels and asks Cornelia to bring out hers, and Cornelia points at her sons, “these are my treasures”. She was no ordinary mother either. The boys grew up to be the Gracchi brothers, the tribunes who set out to redistribute the land of Rome. Kauffmann made a living painting stories like this one. History painting was the most prestigious genre in the academies and the most firmly closed to women, and she made it her speciality.