Portrait of Winckelmann

Angelica Kauffmann painted Portrait of Winckelmann in 1764, one of the most important intellectual portraits of the eighteenth century, depicting the art historian whose Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works (1755) and History of Ancient Art (1764) defined the Neoclassical movement's engagement with antiquity. Winckelmann — the theorist whose declaration that 'noble simplicity and quiet grandeur' were the highest ideals of art shaped the Neoclassicism that Kauffmann herself practiced — is depicted with the directness and psychological presence of her best portraiture. The meeting between Kauffmann and Winckelmann in Rome was significant for both: she painted him, he championed her work, and together they represent the intellectual social world of mid-eighteenth-century Rome.

Kauffman presents Winckelmann with scholarly gravity, surrounded by the classical references appropriate to the great archaeologist. The portrait combines careful likeness with the Neoclassical restraint that Winckelmann himself advocated.