The book is filled with beautiful pictures, which I think is the main point of having it. I'm not so sure with this should be called Feminine Beauty, or Representations of Women that I Find Beautiful. I, and other people, look at portraits of women who were considered ravishing in their own time, and wonder why. Different ages have different ideals, and portraits of women painted in the same era often look very alike. I saw an old photograph on the cover of a magazine and dated it, correctly, to the era when my grandmother was young, because of how the woman looked.

I am skeptical of a lot of Lord Clark's analysis, particularly because, like most art critics and others, he presents subjective opinions as objective facts. If these opinions were objective, they would be able to articulate objective standards, and there would be better agreement. A friend of mine had a much older relative who was well regarded during his life time, his reputation later plummeted, and in the last couple of decades revived. I used to point out articles about him to her, there weren't very many, now he has progressed to having entire books written about him. This may be because a famous exhibit about a previous famous exhibit that he organized, reminded people of his existence. In the 60s, 19th century art was considered so bad that a history of art book scarcely mentioned it except to say it was dreadful; it has had a considerable revival, to my delight.

Moreover, Clark begins with the sentence: "The discovery of feminine beauty, like so much that we value in civilized life, was made in Egypt in the second millenium B.C. " Maybe those are the earliest surviving images or something, but I'm sure that hominins have been judging women's looks since we split from the chimpanzee line, or at least since seeing became our dominant sense. Ironically, Clark judges the women in the Egyptian sculpture pictured in his book as definitely not beautiful.

So, it's fun for the pictures, and people who take art criticism more seriously than I do may enjoy Lord Clark's writing. ( )

This is a delightful book, given to me by my best friend and ex-fiance for my 21st birthday. the irony is that he was ex because like Kenneth Clark, he was a keenly appreciative of fiminine beauty - a real Connoisseur in fact - but as gay as the day is long.

Sir Kenneth is exceedingly erudite but his appreciate of beauty is entirely academic and so, possibly, ideal because idealised? Interesting to see attraction rated purely on artistic skill and aesthetics by a man who did not find even the sexiest of women appealing.

Do gay men rate women differently? Barbra Steisand, Judy Garland, Kylie Minogue.... None of them are included, by the way. Interesting book. ( )