had in the decoration
of the monuments of ancient Egypt.

At present we have no reliable records of the lives and works of women
artists before the time of the Renaissance in Italy.

* * * * *

M. Taine's philosophy which regards the art of any people or period as
the necessary result of the conditions of race, religion, civilization,
and manners in the midst of which the art was produced--and esteems a
knowledge of these conditions as sufficient to account for the character
of the art, seems to me to exclude many complex and mysterious
influences, especially in individual cases, which must affect the work of
the artists. At the same time an intelligent study of the art of any
nation or period demands a study of the conditions in which it was
produced, and I shall endeavor in this _resume_ of the history of women
in Art--mere outline as it is--to give an idea of the atmosphere in which
they lived and worked, and the influences which affected the results of
their labor.

It has been claimed that everything of importance that originated in
Italy from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century bore the distinctive
mark of Fine Art. So high an authority as John Addington Symonds is in
accord with this view, and the study of these four centuries is of
absorbing interest.

Although the thirteenth century long preceded the practice of art by
women, its influence was a factor in the artistic life into which they
later came. In this century Andrea Tan, Guido da Siena, and other devoted
souls were involved in the final struggles of Mediaeval Art, and at its
close Cimabue and Duccio da Siena--the two masters whose Madonnas were
borne in solemn procession through the streets of Florence and Siena, mid
music and the pealing of bells--had given the new impulse to painting
which brought them immortal fame. They were the heralds of the time when
poetry of sentiment, beauty of color, animation and individuality of form
should replace Mediaeval formality and ugliness; a time when the spirit of
art should be revived with an impulse prophetic of its coming glory.

But neither this portentous period nor the fourteenth century is
memorable in the annals of women artists. Not until the fifteenth, the
century of the full Renaissance, have we a record of their share in the
great rebirth.

It is important to remember that the art of the Renaissance had, in the
beginning, a distinct office to fill in the serv