Art card Angelica Kauffman, self-portrait, Uffizi Florence, early twentieth century

Italian art postcard in sepia collotype reproducing a detail of the self-portrait of Angelica Kauffman, painter active in London and Rome in the second half of the eighteenth century, held in the collection of the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence. The card bears on the recto the caption Firenze, Galleria Uffizi, Ritratto di Angelica Hauffmann, dipinto da se stessa (Particolare), in the italianised name form Hauffmann current in Italian cataloguing of the early twentieth century. Printed under the number 2473 on paper carrying the Universal Postal Union international imprint on the reverse, without correspondence lines on the picture side. Unposted, in good condition with slight discolouration and minimal handling marks.

Angelica Kauffman, born in Chur in 1741 and died in Rome in 1807, was a Swiss-Austrian painter who over the course of her life secured an exceptional position within the European academic milieu. After several years of work in Italy, she settled in London in 1766, where in 1768 she became one of the two female founding members of the Royal Academy of Arts. Her self-portraits, several of which she herself presented to major collections, are among the most reproduced works of her output. The Uffizi example was personally given by Kauffman to the museum's collection of artists' self-portraits, a collection that since the seventeenth century has served as an honoured place for the painter's identity. The italianised name form Hauffmann employed on this card dates its issue to the years before the First World War, when Italian publishers routinely adjusted foreign names to Italian spelling.