496. Cornelia Presenting Her Children, the Gracchi, as Her Treasures - Angelica Kauffman - 1785 - VA Museum of Fine Arts

Kauffman--born in Switzerland, trained in Italy, and destined for England--was a leading Neoclassical painter. In Cornelia Presenting Her Children, Kauffman depicts the famously virtuous mother as morally one-upping another woman. That woman, seated on the right, is displaying and boasting about her jewelry, and asking Cornelia to proffer her own. Dismissing the woman's vanity, Cornelia motions to her sons--the famous Gracchis--as her own literal jewels.