Maria Cosway

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Maria Cosway , self-portrait, 1787

Maria Cosway (born June 11, 1760 as Maria Luisa Caterina Cecilia Hadfield in Florence , Grand Duchy of Tuscany , † January 5, 1838 in Lodi , Kingdom of Lombardy-Veneto ) was an English-Italian painter , etcher and teacher .

Life

Maria was born as the daughter of the English-born innkeeper Charles Hadfield († 1776) and Isabella De Kock († 1810). The father had achieved considerable wealth through several restaurants in Livorno . In Florence the family ran three hotels, in which British aristocrats in particular stayed on their Grand Tour . A tragic accident overshadowed her childhood when an insane nanny killed four of her siblings. One of the siblings who survived the insane act of domestic servants was their brother George (1763–1826), who later became an important American architect.

At the age of 4 she was given up for education in a Catholic convent. Maria already showed important artistic facilities there. In addition to painting and singing, she also learned to play the harp and piano. When her father died in 1776, there was a temporary desire to become a Catholic nun. But she remained focused on art, taking lessons in painting from Violante Cerotti (1709–1783) and Johann Zoffany , and at times also from Pompeo Batoni in Rome, and copying the old masters in the Uffizi Gallery and Palazzo Pitti . Her artistic results were so convincing that she was accepted into the Academia del Disegno in Florence in 1778 .

The death of Miss Gardiner , 1789, Musée de la Révolution française

In 1779 she moved to London with her mother and siblings . She had already made the acquaintance of the painter Angelika Kauffmann in Italy , who helped her in London to find herself in circles of society interested in art and to present paintings at exhibitions at the Royal Academy of Arts . On January 18, 1781, Maria married the celebrated British miniature painter Richard Cosway (1742-1821), whom she had met in the house of the art collector Charles Townley (1737-1805). The unequal spouses in terms of age and lifestyle - her husband was about two decades older, was considered small, ugly and vain and became increasingly strange with age - led more or less a purely formal marriage, from which the daughter Louisa Paolina Angelica (1790 -1796) emerged.

As a painter, Maria Cosway managed to acquire artistic prestige on her own. Portraits from British aristocrats contributed to this, as did the paintings that she exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1781 and 1801. In 1784 Maria and her husband moved into Schomberg House on Pall Mall , where the couple hosted an illustrious and multicultural society. Her gift of organizing celebrations with appealing musical and literary performances earned her the ascription "The Goddess of Pall-Mall". The later writer Quobna Ottobah Cugoano came to her house as a servant in 1784 .

In 1786 Maria was introduced to Thomas Jefferson , then US ambassador in Paris, through the painter John Trumbull . A close romantic friendship developed between the two of them, also borne by common interests in art, architecture and the beauties of the landscapes they traveled together. When they went their separate ways, they continued their relationship through written correspondence until Jefferson's death in 1826. In 1995 the director James Ivory received their friendship in the film drama Jefferson in Paris . In the film, Maria Cosway was played by the actress Greta Scacchi .

From 1801 Maria Cosway lived permanently in Paris. There she copied old masters in the Louvre and made etchings from them. When her friend Jacques-Louis David was doing the painting Bonaparte crossing the Alps on the Great Saint Bernard Pass, she met Napoleon Bonaparte . She became friends with his uncle Joseph Fesch . This convinced her to take over the management of daughter schools in Paris and Lyon from 1803 to 1809 . In 1811/12, at the request of Francesco Melzi d'Eril , the Duke of Lodi, she took over the management of the Collegio delle Grazie di Maria SS. Bambina , also Collegio delle Dame Inglesi , a girls' school in Lodi. This position, for which Franz I of Austria elevated her to baroness in 1834 , she performed with one interruption from 1817 to 1821, during which she stayed in London to care for her sick husband, until her death.

Maria Cosway found her burial place in the Chiesa di Santa Maria delle Grazie in Lodi.

literature

Web links

Commons : Maria Cosway  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Maria Hadfield Cosway , entry in Portal de. findagrave .com
personal data
SURNAME Cosway, Maria
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hadfield, Maria Luisa Caterina Cecilia (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English-Italian painter, etcher and teacher
DATE OF BIRTH June 11, 1760
PLACE OF BIRTH Florence , Grand Duchy of Tuscany
DATE OF DEATH January 5, 1838
Place of death Lodi , Kingdom of Lombardy-Veneto