One of the most successful and internationally celebrated artists of the eighteenth century, Angelica Kauffman (1741-1807) established her reputation with sensitive portraits as well as ambitious history paintings. This major new study explores the artist's work and career by considering how Kauffman reconciled the public and presumed masculine pursuit of painting with her role as woman artist and arbiter of private taste. Author Angela Rosenthal analyses Kauffman's pictorial strategies and her significant contribution to portraiture as a field of representation, including detailed discussion of the artist's extraordinary series of self-portraits. Featuring a wealth of new information, this beautifully illustrated book demonstrates Kauffman's role in shaping European visual culture, shedding new light on the history of women artists and on art history as a critical discipline.