Neoclassicism

Angelica Kauffman

Cornelia, Mother of the Gracchi, Pointing to Her Children as Her Treasures

about 1785

Oil on canvas, 40 × 50 in. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond

A visitor shows off her jewels; Cornelia answers with her children, her treasures: virtue set against display.

Look at

• Cornelia stands in white at the centre, the brightest shape, between her sons at left and the visitor at right.
• Her open hand turns the eye from the visitor's jewel box toward the boys.
• Two heavy columns and a plain wall stand behind the figures like a stage set, with open sky between them.

• Painted in Naples in 1785 for George Bowles and shown at the Royal Academy in 1786.
• Signed on the base of the column; bought by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in 1975.

Exemplum virtutis

Latin for 'example of virtue': a story from history painted to teach a moral.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · Public domain