Arms to be kissed a thousands times: reservations about lust in Diderot's art criticism

Focusing on the visual arts and written texts, this book explores the nature of femininity and masculinity in 18th-century Britain and France. The activities and collective conditions of women as producers of art and culture are investigated, together with analysis of representation and the ways in which it might be gendered. This illustrated book should make an important contribution to debates on representation, constructions of sexuality and women as producers. Topics covered include: the artist Angelica Kauffman; constructions of femininity and masculinity in contemporary travel-writing; feminine portraiture in the work of Joshua Reynolds; the writer and poet Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; women artists and the French Revolution; the writer Mary Wollstonecraft; the female role in the architecture of Robert Adam; and the cult of male beauty in the studio of David