wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
The Rape of the Sabines is one of a series of paintings that show scenes from ancient Roman history. They were made to decorate a room and were originally painted on panel, although they have since been transferred to canvas. Their size and horizontal format suggests they were probably intended to be inserted into the wall panelling, as was common practice in Renaissance Venice.

Three other pictures in the series are in the National Gallery's collection: The Attack on Cartagena, The Continence of Scipio and The Intervention of the Sabine Women. A further two pictures from the series, Coriolanus and Scipio rewarding the Soldiers, are in a private collection.

The Roman author Livy relates an episode in which the men of Rome abducted women from the neighbouring cities of the region. The event was said to have happened shortly after the founding of Rome by Romulus and his mainly male followers. The Romans tried to negotiate with the Sabines, who lived in the surrounding region, to secure wives to start families, but the Sabines refused to allow their women to marry the Romans.

According to Livy, the Romans planned a festival of Neptune to attract visitors from all the nearby towns. In Licinio's painting, music is played on pipes as sacrifices are made at the altar of Neptune before crowds of visitors. A man raises his sword to behead the ox that has been pulled down to the ground before the altar. The monuments, fountains and obelisks of ancient Rome appear in the background. As Romulus gives the order from his throne, the Roman soldiers on the right grab the Sabine women who writhe and struggle for freedom as the Romans fight off the Sabine men. A dagger is drawn as a young woman is dragged from her father’s arms. Panic spreads to the crowd around the altar as women, guarded by their menfolk, search in vain for safety. Although the panel is darkened by discoloured varnish, it still conveys a strong and moving sense of the trauma and chaos of the moment.

Livy says that Romulus offered free choice and civic and property rights to the women. The Sabines finally declared war on the Romans but the two sides were held apart by the Sabine women, who said they would rather die themselves than see their husbands and fathers at war with one another. This part of the story is depicted in The Intervention of the Sabine Women.

Style: High Renaissance
Barent Fabritius’s bleak, shadowy stable is coldly lit. Fading evening sunlight glimmers beyond the open doorway and starlight filters through rolling grey clouds overhead -- the light of the guiding star in the story of the Nativity. The rays radiating from the Christ Child in the manger are the main source of light, but even they bring little comfort. Only the deep, dusty pink of Mary’s gown and the shepherd’s extraordinary red hat bring a touch of warmth to the scene.

Nor does there seem to be much joy at the miraculous birth. Mary kneels, eyes lowered, to reveal the child, naked to show that he is human as well as the son of God. Behind her, Joseph stands, grave and still. At the baby’s feet, a shepherd clasps his hands to pray but with a puzzled frown. The others gathered round simply stare almost without reaction. Only the little girl with the pale face and the white bonnet has the hint of a smile as she gazes over at the infant. Behind them all, the donkey and the cow look on.

In seventeenth-century Holland, religious pictures no longer hung on church walls. The old, highly decorated Catholic churches gave way to the plain white walls preferred by members of the new Protestant faith (Pieter Sanraedam’s Interior of the Buurkerk at Utrecht shows what the new churches looked like). But the Dutch were a devout people, and many had small pictures that showed the New Testament story as if it were happening in their own time in their homes.

The Catholic fashion for depicting Mary as a religious icon also began to change. She had often been shown in flowing robes, sitting on a throne, often with a halo. In Protestant images in particular she became a humble and very real young woman from a poor background, more in keeping with the story of the birth of Jesus as told in the New Testament, (Luke 2: 15--16) -- as Barent Fabritius portrays her.

Barent was the younger brother of Carel Fabritius, who had been one of Rembrandt’s most talented pupils. Carel died young, killed in the explosion of the municipal gunpowder magazine in Delft in 1654. Barent’s painting derives from Rembrandt’s versions of the subject. A version made by another of Rembrandt's pupils is also in the National Gallery: The Adoration of the Shepherds. The two pictures share a very similar composition, but the tenderness and intimacy given to the scene by the glow of candlelight and a tighter grouping of the figures in that painting here gives way to harsh lighting and the stark reality of the holy family’s situation as refugees far from home.

Style: Baroque
This panel was once framed with a scene showing the ascension of Christ into heaven, and is the last in a narrative series focusing on key moments in the life of Christ, including his death, resurrection and ascension. This sequence of six paintings formed the middle tier of a large multi-panelled altarpiece made for the Florentine convent church of San Pier Maggiore. The central scene showed the coronation of the Virgin.

Pentecost is the name of an event that happened 50 days after the Crucifixion. Christ's disciples were gathered together to celebrate the Jewish Feast of Weeks when, according to the Bible, a strong wind began to blow and flames like 'tongues of fire' appeared on their heads. The disciples were filled with the Holy Ghost and began to speak miraculously in a number of languages. Those around them were amazed -- they thought that the disciples must be drunk.

We see the disciples sat in a circle in an upstairs room or perhaps a covered walkway, with the Virgin Mary and Saint Peter in the centre. Each has a flame on their head. The upper part of the panel shows a white dove flying downwards into the room, emitting golden rays -- incised into the gold leaf background -- from his beak. The artist has included the windows on the back wall of the room so that we can see all the way through it, giving an impression of its depth. As in the previous scene Saint Peter and the Virgin Mary are shown in the most prominent positions. Saint Peter is even holding his symbol, a key, as in the main tier, so that his identity cannot be mistaken. His prominence is appropriate given the church's dedication to Saint Peter.

The biblical account mentions that a crowd of Jews visiting the city from Mesopotamia, Egypt and Rome gathered to hear the disciples speaking about God in languages they could understand. We see them here on the street below. Some look up, their hands raised in wonder, while two figures listen in at the doors, which are slightly ajar. The artist has shown these men wearing a variety of head coverings, from hoods to crowns to brimmed hats, perhaps to emphasise their diverse and foreign origins. This moment is significant for Christ's followers: it gave them the authority to continue preaching his message to all nations.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
Pictures of this size and shape -- it has 12 sides -- were called deschi da parte (or birth trays) and they were functional and decorative objects, not made to be hung on a wall. Originally used to bring food to women in labour, they eventually became symbolic gifts that may have celebrated marriage or childbirth or formed part of a woman’s dowry. These objects weren't just owned by wealthy families -- inventories in Florence show that people from a broad range of social backgrounds had them.

Deschi da parte usually had a romantic subject and this one is the most romantic of all. The fantastical image has a literary source, a fourteenth-century Italian poem, 'The Triumph of Love', by the well-loved Florentine poet Petrarch. At the centre, a winged, naked figure stands on what looks like a carnival float, drawn by two horses ridden by Black page boys. He draws his bow and aims at the crowd behind; anyone struck by his arrows would fall in love. At each corner of the chariot are four small cherubic cupids also brandishing bows. The scene is very close to the words of the poem -- the naked figure is described as a youth with 'bow in hand and arrows at his side/ No fear had he, nor armour wore, nor shield/ But on his shoulders he had two great wings…’.

The poem also mentions the woman riding on a man's back as if he were a horse. The man is the ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle, who fell in love with a woman called Phyllis. She made him take her for a ride on his back, and the humiliation of the wise philosopher was seen as proof of his love and of its power. To their right an almost-naked man sleeps while a woman cuts his hair with a pair of golden shears. This is a reference to the biblical story of Samson and Delilah. Delilah seduced the biblical hero Samson and, bribed by his enemies, cut off his long hair, the source of his strength.

The whole scene is framed symmetrically by little rocky hills and orange groves. In the distance we can see a hilly Tuscan town, which sets the events in the landscape familiar to its owners.

As this was an object which would be carried around, the underside (or reverse) is painted too. Pinned to a lemon and an orange tree are the coats of arms of the couple for whom it was made. In the centre, a bird, perhaps a heron, pecks at the ground in the meadow. The arms on the right with three red crescent moons belong to the del Zaccheria family, but it's more difficult to identify the other. However, documents record that Apollonio di Giovanni and Marco del Buono made a painting for a woman called Tita, the daughter of Giovanni del Zaccheria, who married a man called Domenico Arditi. As they had already decorated a chest on the occasion of their marriage in 1453 they may also have been asked to make this in celebration of the birth of a child. The bird might be a pun on the name Arditi: ardea means heron in Italian.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
People are skating on a frozen river, with some couples huddled together for warmth. The dark silhouettes of windmills and buildings frame the setting sun. There was a fashion in seventeenth-century Holland for depictions of winter scenes; this was a period of harsh winters that brought heavy snowfall and caused rivers to freeze over. Artists such as Hendrick Avercamp were eager to capture the scenes of people trying to make the most of the bitter weather by skating and playing kolf, an early form of golf on the ice that was incredibly popular at this time.

This picture has been painted in the style of Johan Barthold Jongkind, who was working in this older tradition in the 1860s, but it is probably a forgery, painted by a later imitator who signed it with Jongkind's name in the lower left corner. Jongkind was born in Latrop in Holland, but he spent most of his working life in Paris, where his paintings drew the attention of the young Impressionists, including Alfred Sisley and Claude Monet. Jongkind returned to his native Netherlands in 1855 and remained there for five years. It was after his time in Holland that he produced numerous scenes of Dutch life.

A common feature of Jongkind’s paintings is a vast sky, depicted on a horizontal canvas and stretching over a large part of the composition. The painter of this picture has used a limited colour palette of predominately muted greys, with a subtle yellow tone for the sun. Thick impasto is particularly prominent in the depiction of the hazy, pale sun, conveying the atmosphere of a bleak winter’s day, with heavy grey clouds obscuring the light. Other details, such as the trees to the left and the windmill on the far right of the composition, are very thinly painted with short, quick brushstrokes.

Style: Impressionist
We know very little about this lively, unusual painting of three men and three youths apparently celebrating the spoils of a shoot -- the men all hold dead game birds. It's very hard to determine their relationship to each other. Perhaps we see a father (far left) and five sons, with their family estate in the background. Perhaps we see three friends with their three sons. All are dressed expensively and are probably aristocratic by birth.

The owls in the foreground are intriguing. They were not used as hunting birds, and appear to be pets. The smaller one, probably a little owl, sits on a cage and is being fed a dead baby bird. Its much larger companion seems to be an eagle owl.

This picture was formerly attributed to the school of Nicolaes Maes. It has certain similarities with his portraiture but is not by Maes. It may not even be Dutch, but could be the work of a south German or Polish artist working in the Netherlands.

Style: Baroque
Dark groups of figures stand out against the light of the pale blue and silver sky. A huddled procession comes over the windswept dunes: two fishermen are carrying the body of dead man. His head is turned away from us, but his body has turned blue and his right arm hangs limply beneath him. A woman further back points out to the brown sea, where a boat is stranded on a reef. Another, presumably the widow, walks ahead of everyone else with her two children; she is looking down with an almost blank expression. The little girl to the left stares at the ground in front of her, while the little boy’s face is full of sorrow. He is confronting us directly, and clings to his mother’s arm.

The landscape is painted with broad, rapid brushstrokes. Thick white impasto marks the foaming waves and bands of clouds. The painter’s signature in the left bottom corner blends in with the spiky tufts of dune grass that give the sandy terrain some structure. Israëls’s gloomy palette consists of mostly greyish tints -- the only colourful highlights are the red details of the traditional costumes of the fishermen community.

The composition was probably painted in Amsterdam in 1861, from studies made in Zandvoort, a fishing village near Haarlem. Israëls spent several months in Zandvoort, and became interested in the tragic lives of the fishermen and their families. The subject of the drowned fisherman was not new, but Israëls painted it with unprecedented sympathy. He has depicted restrained emotions that are much more powerful than the theatrical poses employed by other artists. Probably inspired by funeral scenes, particularly by the French realist painters, Israëls would have known works by Gustave Courbet (Buriel at Ornans in the Musée d’Orsay, Paris) and Jules Adolphe Aimé Louis Breton (La Plantation d’un Calvaire in the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Lille). The composition recalls images of the Deposition, when Christ's body was removed from the Cross, and by using an unusually large format for what is essentially a genre scene, Israëls has elevated the subject of the fisherman's tragic fate to the realm of history painting.

Fishermen carrying a Drowned Man is one of a series of four paintings Israëls produced on the theme of the death of a fisherman during a ten-year period. This one is the largest. It signified a breakthrough in Israëls’s career, greatly impressing the critics when it appeared in successive exhibitions in Paris, Antwerp and London in the 1860s and establishing the artist’s reputation in France and England. The painting remained in England (in a private collection) after it was shown at the International Exhibition in 1862, and was donated to the National Gallery in 1910.

Style: Realist
The tide is ebbing at Egmond-aan-Zee, leaving a pattern of loops and swirls in the still-wet sand. You can sense the outward sweep and undertow of the tide before the little waves tumble back towards the shore.

Above, clouds billow, fast moving, sweeping in an arc overhead that echoes the curved mark left in the shingle. The wind blows off the sea, driving two small fishing boats ashore towards a group of men -- tiny silhouettes in the distance -- waiting to heave them to safety. A break in the clouds lights up the hills beyond the beach a chalky green, a line of light that continues out to sea and picks out more small vessels far out, their sails straining in the wind.

More boats are drawn up in the shelter of the sand dunes. The tower of the church that once identified the little town of Egmond-aan-Zee stands sentinel, but 70 years later it was engulfed by the sea and swept away. Huddled into the dunes, two huts made entirely of reeds seem vulnerable against the weather; a silhouetted man and boy on the high dune above them look out at the sea, apparently untroubled by the wind and the threat of rain.

Nor does the weather put off the people chatting on the beach. These are not fishermen but middle-class people out for a stroll, wrapped up warm but in smart, fashionable dress. The women's hair is protected by hoods, their lacy overskirts pulled back and tied with ribbons in a neat fan shape to keep them clean; one shields her face from the wind with a little white fan. The men chat in their enormous brimmed hats, breeches and stockings. Further along the sands, and a little less clearly defined, a woman -- a nursemaid, perhaps -- holds two little white-clad girls by the hand -- two of the group watch as one young man whisks a woman up in his arms. He pretends to throw her into the waves and she kicks her feet in protest. His hat falls off and his hair flies as their little dog leaps and barks behind them.

It may be that these delightful figures weren't painted by Jacob van Ruisdael but by Gerrit van Battem, who worked with the artist in the 1670s, sometimes adding figures to some of his landscapes. It was a common practice at the time for artists to collaborate in this way, one painting the landscape, the other the figures.

Albeit unknowingly, van Ruisdael appears to be representing the beginning of the notion of the seaside as a place of respite and relaxation rather than one best left to sailors and fishermen -- long before it became fashionable in Britain. More than a hundred years later, the great English landscape painter John Constable is said to have proposed to his wife Maria after seeing a print of the same view. He wrote in a letter to her that it reminded him of Bognor and all that was dear to him.

Style: Baroque
A life-size female nude with outspread wings alights upon a cloud, which is blown from a mask’s mouth. The mask is of Boreas, the Greek god of the north wind and of winter. In her outstretched right arm, she holds a long trumpet to her lips. In her left hand, she holds a shorter trumpet.

This bronze sculpture is assembled from several separately made parts. It was probably made in France during the nineteenth century as a replica of a bronze of the same subject by Pierre Biard (1559--1601), La Renommée (Fame), which was made around 1597. Biard’s sculpture (now in the Louvre, Paris) was commissioned for a funerary monument. It is modelled on Giambologna’s bronze sculpture of the Roman god Mercury, which was made around 1580. A messenger of the gods, Mercury also guided souls to the underworld. Biard may have seen a cast of one of the four versions of this sculpture when he travelled to Rome between 1577 and 1580.

Style: Realist, Neoclassical
This is the central panel of the main tier of a large altarpiece with four rows of images, made for the church of San Pier Maggiore, one of the oldest and most respected churches in Florence. This panel was flanked by two others showing rows of adoring saints. Above was an upper tier showing images of the birth, resurrection and ascension of Christ, topped by three pinnacle panels with the Trinity at the centre. There was a predella below, painted with scenes from the the life of Saint Peter, now dispersed in different collections.

The scene shows Christ and the Virgin Mary seated on an elaborate marble throne lined with a blue and gold cloth, known as a cloth of honour. At either side an angel with a flame, representing the Holy Ghost, looks on. The blue backdrop sets off their splendid white robes, decorated with golden birds and flowers which would have gleamed when lit by candles. Christ places a star-topped crown upon the Virgin’s head. She bows her head, crossing her arms in front of her in a gesture of humility. Her delicate profile is made up of just a few simple strokes. The painter has drawn attention to her eyes, which look down, defining the edges of the lids with one definitive stroke.

The coronation of the Virgin took place according the Golden Legend, the thirteenth-century compilation of the lives of the saints, after her miraculous assumption to heaven. This was an important event: the Virgin became a part of the heavenly realm, with the saints, and could be called upon in prayer to intercede for the faithful. It was a popular scene in Florence and this image, like many others made there, drew upon the version painted by Giotto for the Baroncelli chapel around 1334.

Angels playing musical instruments have gathered around the base of the throne, and their symmetrical arrangement frames the coronation. The decorative details of their costumes and instruments add pattern and richness to the scene. The instruments, for example the tiny guitar-like gittern and the larger fiddle, are painted with decorations that resemble marquetry, a technique that uses different coloured woods to make patterns. This angelic orchestra might inspire the viewer to imagine that the scene is accompanied by heavenly music, adding to the sensory experience created by the painting's colours and textures.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
Two saints -- one with wings leaning casually on a sword, the other wearing an animal skin -- stand in a Gothic arch. On the left is Saint Michael the Archangel, the leader of the heavenly army. He was often shown in armour, as in Crivelli's Saint Michael, and with a sword to defeat the devil; the orb he holds is less common and was derived from Byzantine art. Next to him is Saint John the Baptist, whose tanned skin, thin face and rough hands allude to the years he spent as a hermit in the desert. John is said to have worn a camel skin and foraged for food, eating wild honey and locusts.

This is the left panel from the main tier of a  polyptych (multi-panelled altarpiece) painted in Florence in around 1450 by Jacopo di Antonio. Several panels from this polyptych are in the National Gallery. It was made for a side chapel in the church of San Giovanni Evangelista in Pratovecchio, a Camaldolese nunnery about 50 km from Florence.

Saints were popular in medieval altarpieces as they were believed to be able to intercede with God, and patrons included saints who were important to them personally. Here Michael and John are the patron saints of the altarpiece's commissioners, a mother and son named Michele and Johanna, who founded a chapel in the church of San Giovanni.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance