Angelica Kauffman, R.A. 1741-1807

With this magnificent composition Kauffman has chosen to depict a variant of a classical legend which is captured most effectively by the playwright, Euripides.

The background to the story is the legend of the Trojan War.  According to Homer, King Agamemnon of Mycenae was on the point of launching his fleet to attack Troy in a bid to regain his brother's wife, Helen, who had eloped with Paris.  The fleet, however could not sail since the winds had been stilled by Artemis, the goddess of hunting.  The goddess had been affronted by Agamemnon’s boast, on killing a stag, that not even she could not have done it better.  In exchange for a favourable wind the goddess demanded the sacrifice of Agamemnon’s daughter, Iphigenia.  In Homer’s legend of Troy Iphigenia was indeed sacrificed.  In that of others, including Euripides, Iphigenia was spirited away from the altar by the goddess Artemis, and her body replaced with a deer.  Artemis then took her to Tauris where she served as her priestess.  In the present picture Iphigenia sits in front of the altar of Artemis.  According to Euripides the brother of Iphigenia, Orestes, and his companion, Pylades, land on the island of Tauris and are brought into the presence of Iphigenia.  Neither brother nor sister recognises each other until Iphigenia asks Pylades to take a letter to Orestes.  With slight variation Kauffman has rendered this scene, with the exception that the mode of recognition is an apple.  The apple functions as an iconographic reminder of the ‘golden apple’ which first began the strife of the Trojan War.

The present work is dated 1771, but Kauffman returned to the subject later in her career, and a drawing exists of Iphigenia together with Orestes and Pylades which can be dated 1787 (see Düsseldorf exhibition catalogue, Angelika Kauffmann, 1999, no.181).  The following year Kauffman formed a close attachment to Goethe, who was keen to read to her from his recent writings, in particular from his own interpretation of Iphigenia in Tauris.