The Lexikon der Kunstlerinnen 1700-1900 (Encyclopaedia of Women Artists 1700-1900) contains biographies of about 3,100 women artists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It includes women artists who were still working after 1700 or who were born by 1850 at the latest. Besides biographical details, longer pieces shed light on the artist's private and social environments. Extensive material was compiled, not only about professional, academic women artists, but also on many dilettantes and little-known women artists, some of whom had not been dealt with before. Thus, a comprehesive picture is generated, showing the quantity and quality of female artwork from the late baroque until the beginnings of the modern age. An introduction sheds light on social background and circumstances in which women artists worked in previous centuries. A detailed bibliography covers further literature on this subject. Until now, no existing work has dealt so extensively with women artists of this period."