This knowledge also awakens imagination, and we wonder in what other
ancient countries there were women artists. We know that in Egypt
inheritances descended in the female line, as in the case of the Princess
Karamat; and since we know of the great architectural works of Queen
Hashop and her journey to the land of Punt, we may reasonably assume that
the women of ancient Egypt had their share in all the interests of life.
Were there not artists among them who decorated temples and tombs with
their imperishable colors? Did not women paint those pictures of
Isis--goddess of Sothis--that are like precursors of the pictures of the
Immaculate Conception? Surely we may hope that a papyrus will be brought
to light that will reveal to us the part that women 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 _résumé_ 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