The Missing Thread
Daisy Dunn (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £25)
READING Daisy Dunn’s admirable new book, subtitled A New History of the Ancient World through the Women Who Shaped It, I couldn’t shake Zoffany’s portrait of the founders of the Royal Academy out of my mind. It shows them chatting and joshing with each other as they assess two life models, surrounded by Classical busts and statuary. You might at first miss the portraits of two women in contemporary, Georgian, dress, hanging directly above the male nudes and striking a slightly incongruous note. They are of the two female founding academicians, the celebrated artists Mary Moser and Angelica Kauffmann, who were not painted alongside their fellow academicians, but relegated to the walls: it was deemed unfitting for women to be in the same room as a male nude. Throughout history, even when women have indisputably made it into the (gentleman’s) club, reasons have been found to sideline, belittle and obliterate.
