wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
The Emperor Theodosius (about 346--395) -- the figure in a red cape, laurel wreath and armour -- is being blocked from entering Milan Cathedral by the bishop of the city, Saint Ambrose. Theodosius had massacred the people of Thessalonica for their role in the murder of his general, Butheric, so the saint banned him from the cathedral.

This encounter is recorded in the Golden Legend, a medieval compilation of saints' lives. In this painting, the Emperor is accompanied by three soldiers. One of them, on the far left, wears a haughty expression and holds an arrogant pose; the dog at his feet identifies him as Ruffinus, to whom Saint Ambrose declared: 'Thou hast no more shame than a hound.' The rebuke is intensified by the saint's gaze, which is focused on Ruffinus rather than Theodosius, who stands immediately in front of him and is the subject of the story. Like the Emperor, Saint Ambrose is surrounded by a group of supporters. The man second from the right, whose face is most clearly detailed and illuminated, has been identified as Nicholaes Rockox, alderman of Antwerp. Rockox commissioned Samson and Delilah from Rubens and may have also commissioned this picture.

Van Dyck based his depiction of the story on a version of the same subject by Peter Paul Rubens, dated to around 1615--16 (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna). Van Dyck worked as an assistant in Rubens’s studio around 1618--20, and he drew much influence and inspiration from the older artist. He brought his own imaginative flare to his pictures, however, and there are significant differences between this painting and Rubens’s original. This version is less than half the size of the original, and Van Dyck also made changes to the composition. He extended the architecture, bringing it further forward so that it dominates the background and pushes the figures together, giving the scene a more immediate sense of confrontation. Some of the figures’ facial features have also been altered: in the National Gallery picture, the Emperor and his followers are beardless, unlike in Rubens’s version.

Van Dyck made several of these changes while he was painting. He had begun by following Rubens’s original more closely, but altered details as he progressed to infuse the picture with his own distinctive character. Some of these pentimenti can be seen with the naked eye and some can be seen in X-ray and infrared images taken of the painting.

Style: Baroque
The most striking feature of this painting is the giant blood moon partly covered by grey clouds and a tree branch. Around 1527, Dosso became interested in powerful contrasts of light and shadow and his works depict dramatic weather effects.

The infant Christ part-stands on the Virgin Mary's knee and lifts his hand in blessing over the kings who have travelled from the East to adore him. The elderly Saint Joseph reclines on the ground, in a pose rather like a classical river god. His elbow rests on an open book that may represent the Old Testament which, after the birth of Christ, will now be superseded by the New Testament.

The kings have carried gifts to present to Christ. They have placed their offerings on the ground before the plinth on which the Virgin rests her foot. Caspar has brought an alabaster or marble vase; the oldest king, Melchior, has taken off his crown and wears a white turban embroidered with orange and blue thread with a golden fringe. Balthasar stands beneath the moon holding a ewer that probably contains frankincense, his arm outstretched. Originally Balthasar's head faced in the other direction so the gesture may have once looked less strange. His pointed golden crown lies on the grass perilously near his bare foot. The crowd of horses and attendants behind him is supposed to suggest a throng but the effect appears rather muddled. The figure with his back to us derives from Giorgione's Adoration of the Kings of 1506--7.

Behind the Virgin and Child is what looks like a cave covered in vegetation, but is actually a ruined classical arch -- a common symbol in scenes of the Nativity, representing the decline of the old and the coming of a new age. The two bearded men may be sages or prophets.

The landscape is fantastically lit by the huge harvest moon which has turned the night sky on the horizon a deep rose and outlines the silhouettes of trees in gold. The lighting effects give the scene a portentous feel; at the time the painting was made, such meterological effects were frequently interpreted as carrying meaning or presaging important events. The thick grey clouds suggest that a storm is coming -- a slender tree on the outskirts of the distant town sways in the wind. Patches of golden light on the ground are broken with shadows thrown by the clouds.

It is possible that Dosso may have seen a nocturnal painting by Giorgione or that he might have been influenced by seeing the work of Albrecht Altdorfer or another German artist. Raphael's Madonna di Foligno of about 1512 shows the Virgin and Child high up in a cloudy sky against a huge golden sun. It is likely that Dosso actually painted the background in the Madonna di Foligno or, alternatively, that Raphael or whoever assisted him imitated Dosso's style in painting it.

This picture was probably painted in Ferrara where the artist worked for the court of the ruling Este family. Fingerprints -- probably Dosso's -- are very evident in the paint at the edge of the green foliage beside the pink sky, in the yellow of the moon, in the glazes of the green bushes and in the Virgin's right arm.

Style: High Renaissance
An elderly, bearded saint, wearing a bishop's mitre and holding a book and a crosier, gazes directly, almost challengingly, out at us. We are not sure exactly who he is. He has traditionally been identified as Saint Ambrose, the fourth-century patron of Milan, but he lacks the saint's traditional symbol of a scourge (a multi-tongued whip).

This small panel is one of two which probably came from the top level of a polyptych; to judge from the perspective you are supposed to look up at it from below. It was painted in the later years of the fifteenth century by a follower of the great Lombard artists Vincenzo Foppa and Ambrogio Bergognone. The face, with its short, curling beard, wide eyes and penetrating stare, bears some resemblance to Bergognone's male saints. Other aspects of the picture -- his dress and stance, and in particular his oddly sloping shoulders -- recall Foppa's painting of Saint Augustine in Pinacoteca del Castello Sforzesco, Milan. The black background is unusual: figures of saints usually stood against gilded grounds.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
On a grey, sunless day, boats of all shapes and sizes are working hard to navigate a stiff breeze which is whipping up the tops of the waves and flattening the sails tight against the rigging.

In the middle distance, on the right, there is a frigate with a Dutch flag at the head of the mainmast; in the left foreground a gaff-rigged wijdschip, used for transporting people and goods in coastal waters. Both have their sails tied tightly to the right-hand side of the ship as they are battling to sail as close to the direction of the wind as possible. Others, such as the small open boat in the foreground and the other two gaff-rigged boats on either side of the wijdship, are having an easier time of it. They are running with the wind and must be travelling at some speed. We can also see a second warship at anchor and, very faintly on the horizon line, the shapes of many more boats.

This is a busy maritime scene, but there is nothing to distinguish a specific location. However, the fact that the water has remained relatively calm despite the strong wind, coupled with the sheer number of vessels sailing so close together and the presence of the very small open boat in the foreground, suggests we must be in relatively sheltered waters. Most likely this is set in the Rhine delta in southern Holland, where the river separates into a series of wide estuaries around Rotterdam, where Simon de Vlieger was born.

De Vlieger was one of the leading marine painters in the Netherlands in the seventeenth century. Maritime scenes were a very popular genre in a country where the thriving trade-based economy depended on an extensive merchant fleet and whose security was guaranteed by one of the world’s most powerful navies. The principal national transport system relied on thousands of small ferries which plied the network of canals, estuaries and rivers that linked virtually all the key towns and cities of the Netherlands. In the three or four decades after this painting was made, the genre was developed dramatically by artists like Jan van de Cappelle and William van de Velde the younger. De Vlieger was a generation older than them and his ability to capture the sea in different moods and render the details of ships and how they sailed with convincing accuracy was an important influence on them. He often signed his name on a piece of driftwood inserted into the foreground. Here, the paint has darkened and it is no longer legible, but it is written on the piece of wood which sticks out rather oddly in the extreme bottom left of the picture.

Style: Baroque
At the steps of a church, hungry people are being fed. At the centre stands a beggar making direct eye contact with the viewer. Painted in Rome, the work belongs to a series depicting the Seven Works of Mercy, the guiding principle for compassionate deeds inspired by the teachings of Christ, as outlined in the Gospel of Matthew. For another painting by Sweerts belonging to the same series, see Refreshing the Thirsty (L1321).

Style: Baroque
These two panels came from a piece of painted furniture, an important art form in Renaissance Italy. They once adorned a cassone, a large chest decorated with narrative scenes, like Story of David Panels from a Pair of Cassoni (?) and Two Cassone Panels with the Rape of the Sabines.

Cassoni were prestigious and expensive items of furniture. They were normally placed in the man's camera ('chamber'), a room used for sleeping and entertainment. They often showed scenes from classical poetry or history; battles and moral stories were especially popular.  A number of surviving late fifteenth-century cassoni from Verona depict the tale shown here, the so-called Justice of Trajan.

Eighteenth-century inscriptions on the back of these panels, written in Venice by 'Signaroli' (probably the painter Giambettino Cignaroli), attribute the two pictures to Vittore Carpaccio. This attribution is untenable, and they were probably painted in the workshop of Domenico Morone in about 1470--80.

Because of their position on chests, cassone panels were often damaged through use. These ones are in good condition for this type of object. The extravagant frames with their paired dolphins are nineteenth-century replacements for the original pastiglia frames. They were probably very similar to those on a large chest also from Morone's workshop now in the Detroit Institute of Arts. The Detroit chest has two panels in decorative pastiglia frames on the front, on either side of a central panel, also in pastiglia, with a coat of arms. This seems to have been a popular arrangement in late fifteenth-century Verona, and our panels were presumably originally arranged in the same way.

Style: Early Renaissance
In seventeenth-century Holland, it was far more common for married couples to be depicted separately in two paintings than together in the same one. Despite this separation, they were designed to be hung together, often on either side of a fireplace and invariably with the woman’s portrait hung to the right. This placed the wife on her husband’s left -- as it was regarded, at the time, his inferior side. It was a convention which confirmed the contemporary view that marriage was a partnership, but one which was steered by the man.

They are particularly large paintings -- both were originally larger still, but have been trimmed by a few centimetres around their edges -- reflecting the wealth and social status of the couple. Jacob Trip, from Dordrecht, was one of the richest men in Holland and one of Europe’s biggest arms dealers during one of its most turbulent periods of conflict. His wife, Margaretha de Geer, also came from a Dordrecht family which ran a similar business, so the marriage was of mutual economic benefit. It was also one which endured nearly 60 years and produced 12 children, at least five of whom were still alive when these paintings were made, around the time of Jacob’s death in 1661.

The portraits were probably commissioned by two of the Trips' sons for the Trippenhuis, a palatial residence which they were building on one of the canals in Amsterdam, which was prospering and expanding rapidly at the time. The Trippenhuis survives to this day, with canon-shaped chimneys, reflecting the family business, and palm fronds, representing peace, carved on the facade.

Rembrandt has chosen quite unusual poses for this powerful couple. Normally we'd expect each sitter to be half-turned towards the other -- but while Jacob is depicted in this traditional way, Margaretha faces us. He has a reflective, even distracted, air; she seems energised and leans forward towards us. She may be sitting on her husband’s inferior side, but Rembrandt seems to imply that she is the more active and engaged of the two.

Unusually too, Rembrandt has used a different painting style for each. The portrait of Jacob has been done with economy. Rembrandt, usually meticulous in his application of paint when depicting flesh tones, has been very sparing here, especially around the eyes, the shadowed side of Trip's face and on his hands. By comparison, the paint on Margaretha's face and hands has been much more intensely layered. Why the differences? We know that Trip was dying around the same time the portrait was commissioned. Perhaps Rembrandt was working fast to capture the likeness of a man who was mortally ill. Perhaps he started painting only after Trip's death and had to rely on other portraits. Or perhaps he was deliberately contrasting the fading presence of a dying man with the vibrant energy of his wife, who still had another ten years to live.

Style: Baroque
John Julius Angerstein was 35 years older than the painter Thomas Lawrence, and became his friend and patron shortly after Lawrence's arrival in London in 1787. Lawrence portrayed Angerstein, his family and his circle of close friends many times.

This is the earliest of four known portraits of Angerstein by Lawrence, probably painted around 1790 when Lawrence was about 20. It seems to have been painted impromptu on top of an unfinished portrait of a different man, which is now starting to show through the paint. The portrait of Angerstein may have been painted at a single sitting, and has a rapidly-painted sketchy appearance. Lawrence's last portrait of Angerstein depicts him at the age of 84. Lawrence was repeatedly in debt and Angerstein frequently lent him money, most of which Lawrence never paid back.

The son of a German doctor, Angerstein was born in St Petersburg in 1735 and is believed to have come to London in 1750. He was instrumental in the development of the insurance brokers Lloyd's of London, of which he was the chairman from 1790 until 1796. Angerstein was wealthy but not ostentatious in either dress or lifestyle, and he devoted much of his income to charitable work. He did, however, develop a passion for collecting paintings, and Thomas Lawrence and the painter Benjamin West (1738--1820) may have advised him in his acquisitions.

Many of Angerstein's earlier purchases of pictures for his collection were by British artists. The earliest portrait of Angerstein is by Reynolds, who portrayed him in 1765. Angerstein also owned Hogarth's Marriage A-la-mode and his Self Portrait with a Pug (Tate, London), and three monumental paintings by the Swiss painter Fuseli (1741--1825) of scenes from Milton's Paradise Lost.

Angerstein became most active as a picture buyer in the years following the French Revolution, which brought an immense number of works onto the art market. He purchased the giant Raising of Lazarus by Sebastiano del Piombo from the sale of the Orléans collection in 1798. He also bought from dealers who imported art, which was how he acquired Claude's Landscape with the Marriage of Isaac and Rebekah ('The Mill') and its pendant Seaport with the Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba, considered among the most famous paintings in his collection. He also owned Claude's  Seaport with the Embarkation of Saint Ursula, Landscape with Cephalus and Procris reunited by Diana and A Seaport. In the sale of the late Sir Joshua Reynolds's collection, he bought Van Dyck's Portrait of George Gage with Two Attendants. By 1804, Angerstein's collection, at that stage consisting of only 25 paintings, was said to be the best and most celebrated collection in Great Britain.

After Angerstein's death, the British government purchased the Angerstein collection of 38 paintings for the nation with the intention of using it as the foundation of a National Gallery. The Gallery was first housed in Mr Angerstein's former home at 100 Pall Mall before moving to its current location in Trafalgar Square.

Style: Academic, Romantic, Georgian
Following Jewish tradition, Christ was circumcised when he was eight days old (Luke 2: 21). Seated on his mother's lap, Christ reaches out to the mohel, the man who will perform the surgery, who holds a fine blade between his wiry fingers.

Joseph, the Virgin Mary's husband, looks on, his serious expression reinforcing the solemnity of the occasion. The old man raising his hands in an almost ecstatic pose in the background is Simeon, one of the first people to recognise Christ's divinity (Luke 2:25--35). Signorelli has painted him wearing a gold-woven cope, as though he were a high-ranking Catholic cleric. The two other men, by contrast, wear striped turbans, Signorelli's shorthand for biblical dress; they may represent Jewish priests or elders. The one on the right, touches the tip of his finger, perhaps in allusion to the circumcision.

The subject was chosen by the patrons, the Confraternity of the Holy Name of Jesus, who were connected with the church of San Francesco, Volterra. The group was founded in 1424 after a visit by Saint Bernardino of Siena, who had preached a sermon in the city in 1424. Saint Bernardino was famously devoted to the name of Jesus, creating the trigram IHS (the first three letters of Jesus's name in Greek) which often featured as a focus of devotion. The scene was a way of expressing this devotion through narrative, since it was when the infant Christ was given his name: Jesus.

Technical analysis undertaken when the painting was restored in the 1960s revealed that Christ's pose was altered three times. The child as we see him now is the invention of a different artist, Sodoma, who was working in Volterra in the late 1530s. Vasari claimed Sodoma's intervention was due to damage to the original from damp, but we can't be sure. Signorelli has signed the picture at the bottom edge: LVCAS / CORTONENSIS / PINXIT ('Luca from Cortona painted this').

The painting was intended to look like an extension of the chapel in which it was installed so that viewers felt they were seeing the event as it happened. The figures are set beneath a half dome, a common feature of Renaissance chapels, which usually crowned the altar upon which pictures like this stood. The walls are painted with swirls of bright paint in imitation of marble; the circular reliefs in the spandrels represent a prophet and a sibyl who foretold Christ's coming. The vibrantly coloured marble floor tiles are designed to attract the viewer's attention, and the white borders lead the eye towards the central focus of the image, the infant Christ.

Christ's blood shed at the circumcision was seen as a precursor to his sacrifice at the Crucifixion. The basin placed in the centre of the composition, ready to collect the blood, might stand in for the chalice from which Christians would drink wine -- thought to transform into Christ's blood -- at the Eucharist.

Style: Early Renaissance
Willem van de Velde, usually so interested in the detailed depiction of individual vessels, seems to be more concerned in this painting with atmosphere and the emotion evoked by a view of the sea in the evening light. The warm glow of a low sun casts the vessels close to us into shadow, leaving them an elegant, rhythmic series of curves and angles, their sails almost translucent against the sky.

The vessel a little way out with a prominent square topsail is a Statenjacht (state yacht), used to transport members of the Chamber of Representatives (States General) and other dignitaries. A puff of smoke from the cannon of a hidden craft signals the arrival of an important visitor to the yacht, but a sense of undisturbed quiet remains -- smoke and sound will soon be gone. Men go about their work without hurry, regardless of the beauty of the scene, though one figure stands alone with his back to us, sharing our view and, perhaps, our mood.

Style: Baroque
This still-life painting depicts five or six stems of lilac in a tall glass vase, set against a two-tone neutral grey background. Flower still lifes enjoyed enormous success in the late nineteenth century, with artists like Henri Fantin-Latour becoming wealthy on their pictures of cut flowers in vases. Such images were admired for their truth to nature and sense of fleeting beauty. Scholderer’s composition, although not his choice of flowers, is very similar to Fantin-Latour’s painting Roses, painted in England in 1864 and on loan to the National Gallery from Tate. Fantin-Latour’s flower paintings helped to make his reputation in Britain and were highly sought-after by British collectors.

A successful painter of portraits and still lifes, Scholderer was born in Frankfurt where he studied at the Städelsches Kunstinstitut. He made frequent trips to Paris and became acquainted with Fantin-Latour and Manet. From 1871 to 1899 he lived in London. This spray of lilacs, which shows off his considerable skill, was bequeathed to the National Gallery by the artist’s son, Dr J.V. Scholderer in 1971, along with Scholderer's Portrait of the Artist's Wife.

Style: Impressionist