Angelica, Paintress of Minds

The courageous story of Angelica Kaufmann who battled misogyny to become one of the greatest artists of the 18th century. In as she reflects on her vivid and strikingly successful life. One of the two female founders of the Royal Academy, Angelica had to combat fierce misogyny to become recongized as one of the pioneering artistic geniuses of her day. This is a story of a powerful woman living, like us, at a time of huge and bewildering change. When Angelica Kaufmann arrives in London as a young woman in 1766, she is so successful a new word is coined: Angelicamad. She has to flee Britain at the time of mass rots against Catholics. Many years later in Rome, as an old lady, she is afraid of the new century which is destroying the world she knew. Napoleon s armies are storming Italy and she expects her work to be looted. Against this backdrop she tells her life story through the portraits she painted and the friendships she enjoyed with the greatest and most glamorous of the age, which included Goethe, Emma Hamilton and Sir Joshua Reynolds.