Angelika Kauffmann was a Neo-Classical painter and one of the most famous, accomplished and established female artists of all time. She was born in Switzerland, her father was a modest but talented painter and muralist, who travelled constantly to work on his commissions. When her mother died, her father moved to Italy in 1757. After several visits to see her father, Angelika finally followed him and lived in Florence, Naples and Rome, where she saw the great paintings of the Italian Renaissance, while already working as a painter herself. She also worked in Venice and Bologna and became a fashionable portraitist of British travelers on the Grand Tour. She found a female patron in Lady Wentworth, who persuaded her to move to England. Around 1766, she settled in London, became friends with Joshua Reynolds and worked for many important patrons, including the Royal Family. She was one of only two female founding members of the Royal Academy and particularly known for history paintings, usually scenes of classical literature and mythology, but also portraits.
Kauffmann began making prints in Italy, where she also created the present etching, presumably after seeing Francesco Vanni's painting of The Rest on the Flight into Egypt (also known as 'Madonna della Pappa'), which at some point was attributed to Federico Barocci. The painting in oil on canvas is today in the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven (acc. no. 2003.22.1).
In her prints, a more intimate medium than painting, she concentrated on the depiction of women or girls, often without a mythological context, such as a ‘Young Woman holding a Book’, ‘A Girl reading’ of ‘Woman braiding her Hair’. Even when the subject was based on a literary or biblical source, such as ‘Venus holding the body of Adonis’ or in this case ‘The Rest on the Flight into Egypt’, the focus is on the woman. Here, the scene of Mary holding and feeding the young Christ is depicted with particular tenderness. The Virgin is at the centre of the composition, while Joseph is standing to the side, eating a cherry.
It is interesting to compare Kauffmann's etching with an engraving of the same subject by Cornelis Galle the Elder (1576-1650), which was sold at Christie's online in 2021 (January 19-28, lot 80), where the focus seems more on the Christ child than on the mother.
The Pontifical Scots College in Rome (‘Pontificio Collegio Scozzese’) was founded on 5 December 1600 by Pope Clement VIII. In its initial years, the College provided an education for young Scottish Catholic men who, due to the laws against Catholics, could not receive a Catholic education at home. Inspired by St John Ogilvie, the sixteen students studying at the College vowed on 10 March 1616, one year to the day after his martyrdom, to return to Scotland as priests; thus the College became a seminary and has been preparing men for the priesthood and for service in the Church's mission in Scotland ever since.
At first the College was situated in a little house on what is known today as Via del Tritone, opposite the church of Santa Maria in Costantinopoli, but as early as 1604 was transferred to Via Felice, now called Via delle Quattro Fontane, and there it remained until 1962. Two years later, the College moved into purpose-built, modern premises on the outskirts of Rome, on Via Cassia. The building was closed in 2023 and the College is temporarily residing at the Pontifical Beda College.
It was through Dr Alexander Grant, rector of the College from 1846-1878, that a collection of prints came into the College’s possession. A substantial part of the holdings, including many of the most notable works, were sold in the late 1960s. The present selection is being offered for sale to commission a contemporary work of art, once a new and permanent home for the seminary has been found, to commemorate this significant moment in the history of the Scots College in Rome, a history that spans from 1600 to the present day.
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