wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
This painting of the Nativity is the central panel of Romanino's high altarpiece for S. Alessandro in Brescia. The church of S. Alessandro belonged to the Servite Order, who were otherwise known as the Order of Servants of Our Lady. The church was dedicated to the Virgin Mary, mother of God, so she has a prominent position in this altarpiece.

The high altar was the responsibility of the Confraternity of Corpus Christi -- a lay brotherhood which venerated the body of Christ -- so the depiction of Christ before and after death is of central importance in this altarpiece, which would have been placed directly above the tabernacle in which the Eucharist was kept. There would originally have been a crowning panel above the Nativity showing the dead Christ supported by the Virgin and Saint John.

Mary and Joseph kneel in adoration before the infant Christ. He lies naked on a cloth-covered basket in the stable where he was born. They are watched by the ox and donkey traditionally included in scenes of the Nativity, and by a throng of rejoicing baby angels who cavort in the clouds in the upper part of the panel. Two of them hold an inscribed scroll, suggesting the annunciation of Christ's birth to the shepherds, who appear lying on the ground in the middle distance among their sheep.

Much of the paint in the clouds was applied with fingers and palm, the impressions of which are clearly visible. Many features of the landscape in the Nativity are painted wet in wet and the impasto (thickly applied paint) in many areas shows Romanino to have been a bold experimenter with oil paint.

The blue of the Saint Joseph's robe and the Virgin's mantle has darkened due to the deterioration of the pigment smalt. Her mantle is embroidered with widely spaced ornaments in gold thread, incorporating a central fleur-de-lis. The fleur-de-lis is the symbol of Saint Alexander, after whom the church was named because his relics were kept there. Although embroidered mantles like this appear in fourteenth-century paintings and may have been worn then as part of fashionable dress, by the sixteenth century they were usually only worn as part of ecclesiastical dress. Several of Romanino's works, both altarpieces and smaller paintings, depict the Virgin wearing an embroidered mantle of this type. They can also be found in the work of other painters of the period, for example the mantle embroidered with strawberry plants worn by the Virgin in Lorenzo di Sanseverino's altarpiece The Marriage of Saint Catherine of Siena.

An altarpiece of the Adoration of the Shepherds attributed to Francesco Prata in S. Michele a Bedulita, north east of Bergamo, repeats the holy family, the animals and four of the angels from Romanino's central Nativity panel. It is likely that Prata made tracings or measured drawings of Romanino's work. He may have made the copy at the insistence of a patron, which suggests the high esteem in which Romanino's altarpiece was held. Prata's Adoration is not dated but another Nativity by Callisto Piazza, also derived from Romanino's composition, is inscribed 1524.

Style: High Renaissance
This dramatic scene is described by the Roman poet Ovid in book two of the Metamorphoses. Hurtling headlong from the sky through a cloud of orange smoke is Phaeton, son of the sun god Phoebus. He had persuaded his father to let him steer his chariot, which was led by fire-breathing horses, across the sky, but his reckless driving caused rivers to dry up and lands to become desert. Jupiter intervened to prevent further chaos, striking thunderbolts at the chariot and smashing it to pieces, casting Phaeton to his death.

A group of water nymphs, whose figures are positioned to show three views of the female nude, clutch each other in fear. One gesticulates in horror at the sight, her swirling drapery mirroring the movement of her body and adding to the sense of the trio's agitation. Now darkened, the drapery appears almost black but it was originally a sea-green colour. The nymphs' exaggerated poses are mirrored on a smaller scale by the winged figures on the hillock to the right -- these are the Heliades, Phaeton's sisters, who gesture helplessly, unable to save their brother. The ageing figure reclining in the foreground represents the river Eridanus, into which Phaeton fell; Liss has expressed the water's force as it cascades over boulders from the mountains in the distance.

Liss made this picture while he was in Italy, where he spent time in Venice and Rome. The landscape background seems to be inspired by the countryside around Rome, and his focus on the nymphs' naked flesh, painted with rich and free strokes of thick paint, reflects both Italian and Flemish Baroque painting. The painter and writer Joachim von Sandrart, who met Liss in Venice in 1628--29, commented: 'In equally brilliant manner he painted the Fall of Phaeton, and beneath on earth, the water nymphs looking up so terror-stricken, with which beautiful nude nymphs, as well as with the graceful landscape and flaming clouds Liss proved that he was a master of colour and of charming hues.'

Style: Baroque
A young couple, their eyes cast shyly downwards, seem about to strike up a duet. The woman, seated at the keyboard of a virginal, hands her partner a musical score, presumably the part for the violin on the table next to him. But his bow is nowhere to be seen and, in return for the score, he is offering her a glass of wine.

Scenes of music making among young people were common in Dutch seventeenth-century painting, and they would certainly have been understood as references to romantic love. Nearly 400 years later, it is much harder to know if and when we should also read more overtly sexual references into them. In some paintings, a wine glass held at the angle it is here clearly functions as a phallic symbol. But if there is an implication of that kind in this picture, it's relatively subtle. The more obvious parallel set up by Metsu is between the wine glass proffered by the young man and one in the painting in the left background.

Partly covered by a curtain -- a traditional arrangement in Dutch houses at the time -- we can make out just enough to identify it as a reference to an earlier work by Metsu himself (Alte Pinakothek, Munich). It depicts a kitchen or tavern scene on Twelfth Night (6 January), a celebration which commemorates the arrival of the Three Kings in Bethlehem but also marks the end of Christmas festivities. As such, it was a rowdy, drunken affair when people dressed up as kings, fools or other grotesque characters. Metsu’s earlier painting has a very similar figure to the one depicted in the painting behind the curtain. He is drinking and wearing a paper crown, though here, in the later copy, the composition has been reversed and the size of the figure increased.

The young man sitting by the virginal is drinking from a long wine glass which is very similar to the one held by the reveller in the background painting. So it may be that Metsu is making a link between a scene of apparent musical innocence and the potential that, fuelled by alcohol, it might lead to debauchery. The Latin inscriptions on the virginal would therefore seem to be a wry comment on the situation. Both taken from the Old Testament Book of Psalms, the one on the lid refers to the line, 'In thee, O Lord, do I put my trust; never let me be put to confusion', an implied warning against loss of virtue. The one below it, on the inside of the keyboard cover, is translated as, 'Let every thing that hath breath praise the Lord', thus advocating the importance of Christian worship. But as was so often the case in Dutch painting, the mood is not overtly judgemental. Sexual transgression seems to have been considered as a source of amusement as much as a subject for condemnation.

The same virginal (with slight variations) with the same inscriptions occurs in other paintings by Metsu, for example Lady at a Virginal (Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam). He may have used a particular instrument as a model. The second inscription can be found on a virginal of 1620 (Musée Instrumental du Conservatoire, Brussels) which also has a very similar pattern on the front.

Style: Baroque
This is one of at least four versions that Jan van der Heyden made of this scene of Cologne and its half-built medieval cathedral. Although he lived in Amsterdam he travelled quite widely, including visits to German cities along the Rhine such as this. The river was a vital trading route, and Cologne would have been familiar to many merchants in Amsterdam.

It is an alluring view. Van der Heyden has captured the lengthy shadows and raking light of a bright morning in the city street. The long perspective down what was known as Trankgasse is populated with people from all walks of life. We see strolling gentry, a maid carrying baskets, a horseman, a woman with children, and a beggar. These were added, on instruction, by the specialist painter Adriaen van de Velde.

The rest of the painting is certainly by van der Heyden. While he has taken extraordinary care to make the scene seem real -- look at the way he has articulated the cobbles and the shadows falling across the brickwork -- he has also let his imagination run free. Much has changed or been demolished in the 350 years since this scene was painted, but contemporary drawings and the variations in his own versions of the view tell us that van der Heyden made significant adjustments to what he saw.

Take the cathedral. When van der Heyden made this painting the building was certainly still the confusing jumble of unfinished parts we see here. The foundation stone of a hugely ambitious project had been laid in 1248, and the construction work had ground to a halt 300 years later. Work didn’t restart until the campaign of 1842--80 which finally completed the building. So we're looking at a project which had gone nowhere for a century. The strange contraption on top of the unfinished south-west tower is the original medieval crane. The shadowy stump just behind the line of trees is the north-west tower, intended as a twin to frame the west facade. Behind that is the choir, which would remain bricked up until the nave was finally completed two hundred years later. But while the layout of the building is correct, many of the details, such as the window traceries and the dimensions of the tower, are not.

Van der Heyden made similar changes to other buildings. The most prominent, with the walled garden and the bright red brick, is the deanery. This had just been extensively rebuilt, and although it no longer exists we know that the artist painted it in a broadly accurate way. However, the pinnacles on the stepped gable in the centre of the building seem to have been a product of his imagination. Other buildings, notably the two in the right foreground which are reminiscent of the style prevalent in Amsterdam at the time, appear to be entirely made up.

Why would van der Heyden take so much trouble to paint with such attention to tiny detail, and yet take such liberties? Most likely his concern was to produce a pleasing view which captured the sense of a place, rather than a precise record.

Style: Baroque
In this painting Perugino has stressed the humility of the Virgin Mary, positioning her directly in a grassy meadow as she kneels before the infant Christ, a chubby baby. He is supported by an angel who looks towards Mary, sharing in her knowledge of his divinity.

The Virgin's pinkish-red garment stands out against the blues and greens of the lush Italian countryside. This landscape contains all the features favoured by fifteenth-century painters: a river winds through the valley and past a small town, towards distant mountains. The further back we go, the more blue the mountains appear -- a trick to make them seem like they are miles away. This technique, known as aerial perspective and invented by Leonardo, mimics how our perception of colour changes with distance, creating the effect of a vast landscape.

This is the central panel of the lower tier of an altarpiece made for the Duke of Milan (the two flanking panels, The Archangel Michael and The Archangel Raphael with Tobias, are also in our collection). It shows off Perugino's skill at painting in oil, blending colours to create subtle transitions between tones. This was particularly effective in the Virgin's complexion, which is made up of many different shades of peach, cream and pink. With oil paint, features could be defined through the use of lighter and darker shades, eliminating the need for contour lines. When dark lines are used, they have added emphasis: the strongest accents in the painting of the Virgin's face are the black lines that define the bottom of her upper eyelids, adding weight to her humble downward gaze as she worships Christ, her infant son.

Infrared reflectography shows the underdrawing, and by comparing it with the final painted image we can see that Perugino changed his mind several times. The hovering winged angels at the top of the image, for example, were not part of the original design, and have been painted over the sky -- usually painters in the period would paint landscape and sky around figures. Infrared reflectography shows that their outlines are made up of dotted lines, suggesting that the design was transferred from paper: pin pricks would be made along the lines of a paper design, then charcoal dust would be rubbed through and onto the panel.

Style: Early Renaissance, High Renaissance
A crowd clusters around an altar in a church filled with mosaics. On the right, a bearded priest wields a knife; on the left the Virgin Mary, in red and blue, holds the Christ Child. Behind her is Saint Joseph, holding a pair of doves. This is the circumcision of Christ, as described in the Gospel of Luke (2: 21--30).

Eight days after he was born, as according to Jewish custom, Mary and Joseph took Christ to the temple in Jerusalem to be circumcised and also given his name. The doves were traditionally offered as a sacrifice at a child's circumcision. One of the men behind the priest must be Simeon, who had been promised by God that he would not die until he had seen the Messiah. He recognised the Christ Child as the promised one, and  proclaimed words which are inscribed in Latin on the arches: 'Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word. For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel.' The older lady behind is presumably the prophetess Anna, who was also present.

This large and highly decorative picture was commissioned in 1500 for the church of San Silvestro in Cremona by the Venetian jurist and poet Tommaso Raimondi. He is shown in profile on the far right, wearing a luxurious red robe. His wife, Doralice Cambiago, faces him on the far left. Cremona was in the Duchy of Milan, and  Doralice is dressed in the height of Milanese fashion (the same style of outfit is seen in Female Members of a Confraternity, Portrait of a Woman in Profile and  Bona of Savoy (?)). Her initial, D, is embroidered in gold around the hem of her blue brocade overdress. The blond boy kneeling on the step is probably their son, Marco.

The artist, Marco Marziale, signed and dated the painting, and also named the patron, on the cartellino attached to the front of the altar. Marziale was Venetian and a pupil of Gentile Bellini The composition here echoes that of The Circumcision, painted by Gentile's brother Giovanni Bellini. The mosaic vaults reflect Venetian church decoration.

According to the Golden Legend, the circumcision was the first time Christ's blood was shed. It was the beginning of the process of humanity's redemption and foreshadowed Christ's sacrifice at the Crucifixion, which was reenacted on the altar in front of the painting during the Mass.The Feast of the Circumcision was usually celebrated on 1 January in the Catholic Church.

Style: High Renaissance
A mountain top shrouded in mist, a bubbling torrent of water tumbling headlong down a rocky hillside, a lone tree piercing the clouds -- this was one of the favourite themes of the great Dutch landscape artist Jacob van Ruisdael during the middle of the seventeenth century. Inspired by drawings made by his friend and colleague Allart van Everdingen, who had to been to Scandinavia, they proved popular with collectors interested in more dramatic views than those offered by the flat Dutch landscape.

In the past there was argument as to whether van Ruisdael or Jan (Johan) van Kessel, probably van Ruisdael's pupil, painted the picture, but it is now considered to be by van Ruisdael himself. The signature, although added later, is authentic and the painting is similar to other waterfall pictures of the late 1660s, such as A Waterfall in a Rocky Landscape.

Style: Baroque
Nicolaes Maes has turned a biblical moment into a scene from his own time, illustrating part of the Gospel of Matthew (19.13--14): 'Then there were brought unto him little children, that he should put his hands on them, and pray: and the disciples rebuked them. But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.'

The words would have been familiar in seventeenth-century Protestant Holland, where the upbringing of children in the ways of God was of great importance. Although Christ is dressed in a 'biblical' robe, the figures around him wear the clothes of working people of the time, and the little girl standing beside Christ wears her slate at her waist, as children did then. Nor has Maes depicted the women who bring their children as respectful, or even in awe of Christ, as was traditional. These mothers want their children blessed and they push their way forward to get their turn. Christ holds the little girl’s wrist firmly as she tries to turn away from him, finger in mouth. Perhaps she looks around for her mother, whose hand has just released her, or perhaps she has seen something that interests her -- but she may just want to escape the heavy hand on her head. Christ's expression is tender, but he is not a sentimental icon.

The bearded figure gazing down at Christ with anxious eyes, seemingly pressed against the tree on the right, is the disciple Peter, in disgrace for trying to turn children away from Christ. Beside him, a man hoists a child over the heads of the women in an effort to ensure that the boy will also receive Christ’s blessing. An older woman turns her head, resentful at the intrusion.

Maes has used chiaroscuro (strong contrast between light and dark) and dark colours -- browns and blacks enlivened with cream and touches of red in Christ’s robe and, most vividly, the cheeks of the little girl he blesses. Maes would have learned these techniques as a student in Rembrandt’s studio; it is thought that he made this picture shortly after he left the studio. One of his two surviving preparatory sketches for the picture is loosely based on Rembrandt’s famous Hundred Guilder Print.

The figure squeezed in on the left, with his chin just above a baby's head, is sometimes considered to be a self portrait, but there is no concrete evidence to support the idea. Later in his career, Maes produced secular genre paintings that were similarly full of character and incident. They are much smaller than this one and more intricately detailed. There are several in the National Gallery's collection, including A Little Girl rocking a Cradle and Interior with a Sleeping Maid and her Mistress ('The Idle Servant'). We can’t know for certain why the change in style, scale and subject matter came about, although it may simply be that there was a more ready market for smaller genre paintings. Maes never again attempted a picture on this ambitious scale.

Style: Baroque
This panel was the first in a series of narrative scenes showing events from the life of Christ from his death to the Resurrection. It formed the middle tier of a large multi-panelled altarpiece made for the Florentine convent church of San Pier Maggiore. Its central scene shows the coronation of the Virgin.

The infant Christ lies in a manger covered with a red cloth, which adds a regal element to his humble birth. The ox and donkey, more used to eating hay from the manger, lie beside it, while two groups of angels hover above. The Virgin Mary sits on the other side, her hands pressed together in prayer, while Joseph, wearing a lilac cloak, looks on. Behind a rocky crag two shepherds also look on in adoration. We know they are shepherds: in the hills above the stable, we see them with sheep and a sheep dog, shielding their eyes from the blinding light of an angel carrying a lily, a symbol of the Virgin's purity.

According to the Gospel of Luke (Luke 2: 7--16), the angel appeared to the shepherds at night to tell them of Jesus's birth. The artist has painted this scene using only black, olive-green and yellow. The limited colour gives the impression that this is a night-time scene, but the use of yellow suggests that the angel's light is an illuminating force. This is one of the earliest example of a panel painting with a gold background showing a night scene, though it had been shown in a fresco by Taddo Gaddi in the Baroncelli Chapel in the church of Santa Croce in Florence.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
We do not know who this lady is. Her costume suggests that she is a Florentine noblewoman of the late 1570s and 1580s and it is likely that the portrait dates from that time.

The style of the portrait is similar to those of Bronzino, who was court artist to Cosimo I de’ Medici (1519--1574), Duke of Florence and later Grand Duke of Tuscany. It may be that this lady is an invention based on several portraits of Medici ladies by Bronzino. The portrait also resembles those by Bronzino’s pupil Alessandro Allori (1535--1607), who painted court portraits for Cosimo I’s son, Grand Duke Francesco I de’ Medici (1541--1587).

The lady was formerly believed to be Bianca Cappello (1548--1587), Francesco’s mistress and later his wife. However, other than in the opulence of her costume, she does not especially resemble her.

Style: High Renaissance, Mannerist