Excerpt from The Dome, Vol. 3: An Illustrated Magazine and Review of Literature, Music, Architecture and Graphic Arts; April, June, July, 1899 Thus, if we are to consider the more serious side of feminine Art in the past, it is to the women portrait-painters that we must turn. There is no lack of respectable technical accomplishment. Almost all the Italian ladies came of painter families, and were trained from youth in the language of their craft. Angelica Kauffmann, With all her Dresden-china airs and graces, knew far more about methods and materials than most modern painters. Vandyck, speaking of his conversations with Sofonisba Anguissola, said he had learned more from a blind old woman than from the study of the great masters. The two pictures by Artemisia Gentileschi at Hampton Court show how thoroughly she was able to master the technique of seventeenth-century Italian painting. The charming portrait of herself by Madame le Brun in the Louvre is one of the most popular pictures in the world, and though it seems cold, tight, and metallic When compared with really fine painting, it is a thoroughly sound piece of work. The portrait recently added to the National Gallery is not quite a happy specimen of the style of this accomplished lady, but it will at least serve to show that she had learned her business well enough to take a fair place among portrait-painters of the second order. Indeed, she was perhaps the most generally talented of all female artists of the past, and her best work therefore may be taken to represent the high-water mark attained by women in painting up to the middle of the present century. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.