Portrait of a Lady as a Vestal Virgin

The Swiss painter Angelika Kauffmann was one of the best-known artists of the 18th century, famous for her portraits and history paintings. In the Dresden painting, she revisits the popular figure of the Vestal Virgin, one of the revered priestesses who cultivated the fire in the Roman goddess Vesta's temple in Rome.  The oil lamp in the painting is a reference to this. Owing to their chastity, the Vestal Virgins were well suited as symbolic representations of spiritual purity.

The Vestal Virgin, dressed in immaculate white clothes and partially veiled, keeps her eyes demurely averted and in shade. This reflects the contemporary ideal of the middle-class woman as virtuous and modest.

Maria Anna Angelika Kauffmann RA, usually known in English as Angelica Kauffman, was a Neoclassical painter who had a successful career in London and Rome. Remembered primarily as a history painter, Kauffmann was a skilled portrait, landscape, and decoration painter. She was, along with Mary Moser, one of the two female founding members of the Royal Academy in London in 1768.

To see this beautiful painting, visit the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden in Germany.

P.S. Angelica Kauffmann was the true queen of Neoclassical art! Read more about her here. <3