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Dimensions: 39 × 49 1/2 in. (99.1 × 125.7 cm)
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Provenance: Provenance The artist George Bowles, The Grove, Wanstead Rebecca Bowles Rushout, his sister, 1818 Anne Rushout, her daughter, Wanstead Grove (inventory of 1826) Harriet Rushout Cockerell, her sister, 1851 Charles Rushout, her son, 1869 Rushout Sale, Phillips & Neale, December 9, 1879 Residence of the government of Alberta, 37 Hill Street, London, ca. 1890-1974 Christie's, London November 22, 1974 The Herner Wengraff Gallery, London, 1974 To the current owner, 1975
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Exhibited: Exhibited Women Artists: 1550-1950 Los Angeles County Museum of Art, December 21, 1976 -March 13, 1977; mounted by Ann Sutherland Harris and Linda Nochlin for the MuseumThe exhibition and subsequent book published by Random House has been described as the cornerstone for feminist research in art history and traveled as follows:University Art Museum, The University of Texas at Austin, April 12-June 12, 1977 Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, July 14 -September 4, 1977 The Brooklyn Museum, October 8 -November 27, 1977 Angelica Kauff man 1741-1807 Retrospective Organized at the Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf by Beftina Baumgärtel, November 15, 1998 -January 24, 1999, with catalogue: Angelica Kauffman, A Poet with a Brush, Verlag Gerd edited by Beftina Baumgärtel with contributions by Brian Allen, David Alexander, Werner Busch, Inken Maria Hußmann, Petra Maisak, Silvia Neysters, Steffi Roeftgen, Ingrid Saftel Bernardini,Viktoria Schmidt-Linsenhoff, and Peter Walch; illustrated in color (#230), and traveled as follows: Haus der Kunst, Munich, February 5, 1999 -April 18, 1999 Bündner Kunstmuseum, Chur, May 8 - July 11, 1999
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Notes: For the exhibition catalogue of Women Artists: 1550-1950 (see above) Mr. Walch wrote, with some additions and changes for this catalogue, as follows: For the first few years after Kauffman and her husband Zucchi established their Roman residence at via Sistina, no. 72, it was their practice to summer in Naples.The last of these extended Neapolitan sojourns took place in1785, and it was from Naples that, on the 20th of October, 1785,she sent by ship to London a case of three pictures to her most faithful English client, Mr. George Bowles. [The other two pictures contained in this shipment to Mr. Bowles were Kauffman's Cornelia, Mother of the Gracchi, now at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond and Pliny the Younger and His Mother at Misenum, now at the University Art Museum, Princeton, NewJersey.] In her studio-book (kept by Zucchi) we find the following description:Virgil, ill and nearing his death, writing his epitaph in the presence of his two friends, the poets Varius and Tucca, who are sorrowful at the approaching loss of their friend. The muse in sadness guards safely the writings of the Aeneid which the Poet had destined to the flames-the bust of Augustus is on a pedestal as his great protector, 60 guineas.Virgil died at Brundisium in 19 b.c., at the age of fi fty, of a fever incurred while traveling back to Rome from Athens in the company of Augustus. In Kauffman's picture he appears more youthful than that, though his sickly, pale green complexion contrasts with the healthier tones of his companions. Virgil is just completing the last word of his self-composed epitaph:"Mantua me genuit; calabria rapuere; tenet nunc Parthenope;cecini pascua, rura, duces." (Mantua gave me light; Calabria snatched me away; now Naples holds me; I sang of shepherds,fields, and wars.) The last refers to the subjects of Virgil's three major works: the Bucolics, the Georgics and the Aeneid, the titles of which can be read on the rolls in the parchment case on the left in Kauffman's picture. Suetonius's Life of Virgil is one source for the legend that the poet wished his unfinished manuscript of the Aeneid to be burned. Instead, Varius Rufos and Plotius Tucca emended the epic poem after Virgil's death, and-operating under the instructions of the poet's longtime patron and benefactor,Augustus-had it published.Kauffman's fascination with the legends of Virgil's death can be traced back to her first visit to Naples, July 1763 to April 1764,at which time she sketched Virgil's tomb, a dilapidated columbariumon the side of Mount Posilippo, long rumored to be (but no longer recognized as) the poet's last resting place. At the bottom of her page, Kauffman copied an inscription from inside the tomb: a 16th century couplet, ending with the same phrase ("... sang of shepherds, fields, and wars") as in Virgil's epitaph. Kauffman's Virgil Writing His Own Epitaph represents one of the artist's most rigorous and precise aftempts at archaeological correctness:one notes such details as the purple-stained manuscript case, the broken-stringed lyre, and the furnishings straight from the: pages of the Royal Neapolitan 18th-century publications of the excavations at Herculaneum and Pompeii. Extended quotation comes from Mr. Walch's entry in the Dusseldorf exhibition catalogue.
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