Flora

Flora at the UCL Art Museum depicts the Roman goddess of flowers and spring — a subject that Kauffmann returned to repeatedly because it allowed her to combine classical mythology with the decorative celebration of female beauty and the natural world that appealed to her aristocratic clientele across Europe. Kauffmann's decorative mythological subjects, featuring beautiful female deities surrounded by flowers and flowing fabric, were enormously popular as interior decorations in Neoclassical homes, where they were displayed in ceiling roundels, overdoor panels, and cabinet pictures alongside architectural ornament designed in the same classical vocabulary. Her ability to create decorative mythological subjects at multiple scales — from small cabinet paintings to large ceiling decorations — made her an indispensable contributor to the Neoclassical interior design projects of the 1770s and 1780s in Britain, Italy, and across Europe. The UCL Art Museum holds the Flora as part of a collection assembled through the university's connections to art and learning, and the painting demonstrates Kauffmann's command of the decorative mythological subject at its most refined and appealing.

The goddess is rendered with Kauffmann’s characteristic softness and decorative charm. Floral elements and flowing drapery create a composition of elegant beauty appropriate to the goddess of spring.