Angelica Kauffmann Reads Goethe: Illustration and Symbolic Representation in the Göschen Edition

Waltraud Maierhofer

doi:10.15173/sj.v2i1.73

Abstract

This article discusses the use of illustrations -- and their relinquishment -- in the first edition of collected works by Johann Wolfgang Goethe ( Goethe's Schriften , 1786--90) and focuses on three illustrations by the pre-eminent eighteenth-century artist Angelica Kauffmann (1741–1807), done in Rome. They form, I argue, real illustrations, not mere decor or images independent from the text. The images in question are: 1. A scene from Goethe’s play Iphigenie auf Tauris 2. A scene from Goethe’s play Egmont 3. an allegorical portrait of Goethe/a poet with the muses of tragedy and comedy. In his published descriptions in Italienische Reise Goethe recommends the first two as models for the reader. In the third one, I argue, Kauffmann represented herself as inspiring the writer; in a general sense it reflects the visual arts as inspiring poetry. The three illustrations mark an important change in book illustrations in the eighteenth century. Goethe and his publisher Goschen turned away from illustrations manufactured in series for the purpose of decor and good sales to illustrations where the author took an active role in the selection process and worked with the artist towards his ideal of symbolic representation which he later regarded as unobtainable and favored editions without illustrations.

Highlights

It is important to note that Goethe discussed these two images in his autobiographical work Italienische Reise (Italian Journey), published several decades later, publicly affirming and emphasizing the “correctness” of Kauffmann’s reading of his literary works over criticism he encountered
Weimar society’s initial reception of Egmont found faults with its plot and logic, especially the apotheosis-like end of the bourgeois lover. In his Italian Journey, the discussion of Egmont forms the end of Goethe’s report of December 1787: based on a letter originally addressed to his theologian friend Johann Gottfried Herder in Weimar, Goethe conveys how, after lengthy and fruitless deliberations about his Weimar friends’ criticism of Egmont, his solution for Clara, and the dream scene, he turned to Kauffmann and how she responded
The three illustrations discussed here mark an important change in book illustrations in the eighteenth century

Summary

Waltraud Maierhofer

Angelica Kauffmann Reads Goethe: Illustration and Symbolic Representation in the Göschen Edition. The third one is not an illustration of a specific text, but of a relationship of artist and poet, an allegorical portrait of Goethe/a poet with the muses of tragedy and comedy It appeared, engraved by Lips, one year after Goethe’s return to Weimar in volume 8 of his Schriften (1789) containing poems (see figure 2). Weimar society’s initial reception of Egmont found faults with its plot and logic, especially the apotheosis-like end of the bourgeois lover In his Italian Journey, the discussion of Egmont forms the end of Goethe’s report of December 1787: based on a letter originally addressed to his theologian friend Johann Gottfried Herder in Weimar, Goethe conveys how, after lengthy and fruitless deliberations about his Weimar friends’ criticism of Egmont, his solution for Clara, and the dream scene, he turned to Kauffmann and how she responded. The frontispiece goes beyond pretty decor for a volume of poems and achieves symbolic representation of the creative process

Conclusion

Works Cited