Two Gentlemen of Verona

Angelica Kauffman's Two Gentlemen of Verona, painted in 1788, illustrates Shakespeare's early comedy, likely depicting a scene between the two friends Valentine and Proteus whose friendship is tested by rivalry over the same woman. Shakespeare had become a major source for British and Continental painters by the late eighteenth century, his plays offering a wide range of subjects with guaranteed cultural prestige and widespread public recognition. Kauffman was among the painters who took Shakespeare seriously as a literary source, applying her Neoclassical figure vocabulary to English literary material in a synthesis that was very much her own. This late work dates from her permanent return to Rome in 1782, and it shows her mature style: elegant, softly colored, compositionally clear — a Neoclassicism tempered by warmth and narrative sympathy rather than austere heroism.

Kauffman disposes her two figures in a graceful contrapposto arrangement, their relationship and emotional dynamic communicated through posture and expression within the compositional economy characteristic of her mature work. The palette is warm and restrained, the drapery falling in the gently idealized folds of her Neoclassical manner. The faces are characterized with psychological delicacy.