wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
An inventory made in Ferrara in 1631 describes this painting as a bacchanal: a general scene of lovemaking and drunkenness involving nymphs and satyrs -- followers of Bacchus, the Roman god of wine, agriculture and fertility. It has been suggested that the picture shows Silenus arriving uninvited at the Feast of the Gods, as described by the Roman writer Ovid (Fasti, VI, 324). However, the fat drunkard Silenus appears to be riding away from the party on his donkey.

A group of men and women are seated on the grass around a white cloth on which a plate of food, a loaf of bread and a wooden spoon and a glass have been laid. Other bowls of food and plates lie on the grass. One bowl contains bread, cheese and fruit; the other contains grapes and a cut melon on which three flies have settled. A woman brings a dish with a roast fowl, and another carries what looks like a wineskin.

Two men in the foreground are naked, while the women are elegantly dressed. In the Concert Champêtre (Louvre, Paris) generally thought to be by Titian, we see a similar party in the countryside, although there the men are clothed and the women are naked. In this painting the man on the right, holding a glass of red wine in his left hand, looks directly at the viewer and smiles, his mouth open. His face is highly reminiscent of Dosso Dossi's laughing man in Laughter, Crying, Fear and Wrath (Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice). Beside him, a putto blows a horn to wake up his drunken companion who has allowed the rush-covered flask of wine to spill.

To the left, a satyr stands beside a naked nymph draped in a red cloth, her body resembling an antique marble figure. Behind them, a woman embraces a satyr on the grass, and in the distant glade women listen to satyrs playing a recorder and fiddle. Two of the women watch Silenus as he rides away. Cows graze in the meadows and a shepherd sits under a tree with his flock of sheep.

The painting resembles the great bacchanal scenes that were commissioned from the leading painters of Venice by Alfonso I d'Este, Duke of Ferrara for the Camerino d'Alabastro (Alabaster Room) in his palace, in particular Bellini's Feast of the Gods (National Gallery of Art, Washington) and Titian's Bacchanal of the Andrians (Prado, Madrid). These pictures are noted for their rustic comedy as well as their visions of the pastoral excursions of the gods. Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne was also painted for this room. The absence of the pigment ultramarine blue, which features consistently in the paintings for the Camerino d'Alabastro, makes it highly unlikely that this bacchanal could never have hung among them, as has sometimes been suggested. The blue pigment in the sky here is azurite, which is now hidden by several layers of old discoloured varnish and overpainting.

It is not known who painted this picture, but the artist must have known Dosso's work in the Ducal Palace in Ferrara. It may have been commissioned by a Ferrarese patron who wanted an original work inspired by Bellini and Titian's Bacchanals for Alfonso d'Este.

Style: High Renaissance
This small, arched painting of the Virgin Mary grieving comes from a large polyptych (a multi-panelled altarpiece) painted in around 1450 for a provincial house of Camaldolese nuns in Pratovecchio, Tuscany. A number of other panels from the Pratovecchio Altarpiece are also in our collection.

Early Renaissance altarpieces were often multi-storey constructions, with figures arranged in layers around a large central panel. This one would have been at the top of the altarpiece, on the left of an image of the Crucifixion  (now lost) above the central panel of the Assumption of the Virgin.

The Virgin's sombre dress and sorrowful expression gives a feeling of brooding melancholy to this panel. The artist, Jacopo di Antonio, was heavily influenced by the emotional intensity of Florentine painter Andrea del Castagno and by Donatello's sculptures. The strong contrasts of dark and light in the complex folds of the draperies and the shadows cast by the figures in the altarpiece create an illusion of three-dimensional space, so that they seem like statues standing in niches rather than flat paintings. One device that we see -- the rows of white dots around the Virgin's halo -- is also found in Florentine manuscript painting.

It is very unusual to have the Virgin turning away from the Crucifixion as she does here: she was usually shown collapsing in distress or gazing sorrowfully at her dead son. Renaissance painters often borrowed ideas from other artists, and her gesture might be derived from the sculptor Donatello's terracotta relief of Saint Damian in San Lorenzo, Florence.

In contrast with the rest of the polyptych -- and most early Renaissance altarpieces -- the Virgin stands against a dark background rather than one of burnished gold. The background has, however, been overpainted and would originally have been gold like the other panels.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
This modello, or detailed oil study, is one of a group of 12 that Giordano made in preparation for the ceiling frescoes in the Palazzo Medici Riccardi in Florence in 1682--85 (ten of the modelli are in the National Gallery's collection). This one corresponds with the group in the right corner of the barrel-vaulted ceiling, opposite the entrance of the grand Galleria and to the right of The Cave of Eternity.

The central figure represents Justice, one of the four Cardinal Virtues. These were first identified by the philosopher Plato, and later adopted by the Roman Catholic Church. One Virtue is depicted in each of the four corners of the Galleria and they form part of a continuous frieze of allegorical and mythological scenes. In the finished fresco, four of the Medici family depicted in the centre of the ceiling are also given attributes representing each of the Virtues.

Justice, carrying the scales and sword which are her traditional attributes, is borne by an ostrich. The connection between the flightless bird and justice was apparently first made by Raphael in his fresco in the Sala di Costantino in the Vatican Palace (1519--20). He seems to have been playing on ancient Egyptian beliefs that, after death, the fate of your soul was determined by weighing your heart against an ostrich feather.

To the right are Punishment, with his sword turned down, and Recompense, from whose cornucopia rewards pour out. In the left-hand corner, pinned down by the foot of the ostrich, is the masked and serpent-tailed figure of Deceit, who holds up a bunch of flowers in which a poisonous snake is concealed. Behind him is a net to ensnare the unwary. On the right are Strife, and Discord with his bellows. The flying figures above represent the rewards of Justice, from left to right: Order (with a shield and spear), Fame (winged and blowing a trumpet), and Security (holding an anchor and carrying a nest on her head, signifying that children may be reared in safety).

In the final fresco, the leopard against which Deceit leans is changed into a tiger. Giordano also altered the attitude of Justice so that she looks up towards Order instead of staring directly at her scales. He made similar changes to the postures of three of the four Virtues, presumably at the request of his patron, the Marquess Francesco Riccardi (only Fortitude keeps the same downward gaze as employed in the modello). The alterations to posture better suit the curvature of the ceiling and inject more energy and dynamism to the design, sending the eye up towards the centre of the room.

Style: Baroque, Academic
Although inscribed G. Courbet, there is little reason to believe this is a work by Gustave Courbet, or even by one of his collaborators. The painting was previously titled L’Orage (The Storm) because of the dark grey cloud that looms over the landscape. Despite the area of bright blue sky on the horizon, the extensive use of blacks and very dark greens imparts a gloom to the scene that is perhaps meant to suggest dusk or twilight.

This interest in the dramatic play of light and dark within a landscape recalls work by painters of the Barbizon School in mid-nineteenth-century France, although this picture lacks the tonal delicacy and technical skills that characterise work by these artists. Much of the picture is quite crudely painted, but the artist may have wanted to create an effect of sketchiness and perhaps used a palette knife for some areas. The cloud, especially, looks as solid as the mountains beneath it.

Style: Barbizon
Although this panel has been cut down on the left-hand side, its original size and shape suggests that it was probably made to decorate a piece of furniture perhaps for a bedchamber. It is in the style of Palma Vecchio, although it has suffered much damage.

The painting depicts an episode from the story of Cimon and Efigenia, as told in Boccaccio’s Decameron (5:1), written and published in 1353. Despite being son of the King of Cyprus, Cimon was coarse and uneducated, and was sent away by his family to live and work on their farmlands. One day, while walking through meadows, he came across a sleeping lady with her handmaidens. Touched by her beauty, as Cimon fell in love with the sleeping Efigenia his heart opened to all of the virtues he had been lacking before, and he was transformed into a noble and worthy soul.

We, like Cimon, voyeuristically observe Efigenia’s beauty as she sleeps beside her watchful handmaiden in a copse beyond the walls of the distant shoreside city.

Style: High Renaissance
This is a fragment from an altarpiece made for the high altar of the Benedictine abbey at Liesborn. It comes from the central scene of the Crucifixion and is one of two fragments, both in our collection, that show saints standing at the base of the Cross. Another section of the scene, showing Christ's head, is also in our collection.

The figure on the left wearing red robes is Saint John (described in the Gospel of John only as ‘the beloved disciple’, he is thought to be John the Evangelist). He wrings his hands in grief. The artist has taken great care painting his hair: his blond curls are a brighter shade where they catch the light. According to the Bible, Saint John and the Virgin Mary were both at the Crucifixion, and so they are often shown together in Crucifixion scenes. It was not uncommon in Westphalian painting to include other saints with the Virgin and John. Beside John here are the fifth-century twins Saint Benedict, the founder of the Benedictines, the religious order who worshipped at Liesborn, and Saint Scholastica, who is shown as a Benedictine abbess. She holds a crosier carved with the Old Testament scene of the sacrifice of Isaac (Genesis 22: 1--9), when God commanded Abraham to kill his son Isaac, as a test of the man's faith. In Christian theology the event was interpreted as foretelling Christ's own sacrifice at his crucifixion.

When the panel was cleaned, the fluttering drapery at the top right was revealed beneath gilding. It is part of Christ’s loincloth and it situates the group of saints to the right of the Cross, confirming that this fragment belonged to the central scene. It was probably covered up when the altarpiece was dismembered, as the panel would have been easier to sell as an individual work with a unified gold background. A strip of decorative punchmarks on the right indicates the edge of the scene. The scene has been removed from its original wooden panel and transferred to canvas.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
Four women dressed in colourful Renaissance-style costumes are shown standing below what may be a vine. On the reverse of the panel is another image of a standing woman. The exact subject of this picture has not been identified. This is not surprising, since in Monticelli's late career his technique had evolved to the point where his subject matter was subsidiary to colour and surface texture.

Comparison with other works executed by Monticelli between 1877 and 1880, such as Subject Composition, allows us to date the picture to the late 1870s. Like the latter picture, this one is very thickly painted: up to five layers of paint can be detected, and few areas of the panel are left uncovered.

Style: Impressionist
A young peasant -- beardless and red-cheeked, with curly hair and a dreamy look in his eye -- represents Summer in the second of Teniers' allegorical paintings of the seasons. Behind him the trees are in full leaf and the distance is hazy with heat; above, the clouds are light and puffy.

The youth stands steadying the sheaf of corn he has just finished binding with plaited straw. He wears a loose open-necked shirt, but his brown breeches and stockings are thick and heavy. Perhaps because of the summer heat and the weight of these garments he's less active than the characters Teniers portrays as the other three seasons, though the peasants behind him are working hard. The man wields a scythe to cut the corn, while the woman bends to heap it into sheaves, ready to be tied.

Style: Baroque
This small roundel of the Virgin Mary comes from a polyptych (a multi-panelled altarpiece) painted in Florence in about 1450. It was made for a side altar in the church of San Giovanni Evangelista in Pratovecchio. Other panels from the same altar are also in the National Gallery's collection.

This is half of an image of the Annunciation, when the Angel Gabriel appeared to the Virgin Mary to tell her that she would conceive the son of God. Gabriel appears in another roundel on the opposite side of the altarpiece. The Virgin Mary is shown with her arms crossed in front of her chest in a gesture of acceptance. She is reading a book which lies open on a book stand; according to medieval tradition Mary was thought to have been reading the Old Testament prediction of the virgin birth of the messiah at the moment of Gabriel's arrival.

The Virgin was extremely important in medieval Christianity. Episodes from her life were shown in many altarpieces, as altars were often dedicated to her. These two small roundels of the Annunciation would have been on either side of an image of the Assumption.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
In this small and intimate painting -- it only measures around 20 by 30 cm -- everyday objects appear monumental and take on a mystical intensity. On a tabletop or ledge, a ceramic cup of water with delicately curved handles sits in the centre of a shiny metal plate, made of pewter or silver. A rose in full bloom balances on the plate's edge.

That these objects have religious significance would have been immediately obvious to devout Spanish viewers in the seventeenth century. The cup full of water was seen as a symbol of purity of the Virgin Mary, having been the one chosen by God to give birth to Christ. The rose is also often associated with Mary, and its thornlessness may refer to the Immaculate Conception (the belief that she was conceived without sin). According to the third-century saint, Ambrose, the roses in the Garden of Eden only grew thorns after Adam and Eve had sinned. The rose -- and lily, another flower associated with the Virgin -- also appears as a symbol in Still Life with Lemons in a Wicker Basket, a work by Juan de Zurbarán, a gifted still-life painter and Francisco's son. There, we also see a reference to the Virgin's purity in the delicate porcelain cup containing water.

Here, the cup, plate and rose are bathed in light, creating a marked contrast with the darkness behind. The stark simplicity of the surrounding space provides no distractions, and we are invited to appreciate the beauty of light reflecting on water and bouncing off polished surfaces. Different textures -- the delicate rose petals, the cool smooth surface of the ceramic cup, and the reflections on the metal plate -- are vividly conveyed. Francisco de Zurbarán's painting encourages meditation and quiet contemplation, an approach not dissimilar to that which he adopted in his religious paintings.

This painting was probably made in the early 1630s, shortly after Zurbarán had moved to Seville and established a workshop there. Very few still-life paintings by him are known, though he frequently included still-life elements in his religious works. This painting is closely related to Zurbarán's most celebrated still life, Still Life with Basket of Oranges (Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena), which is dated 1633. It is a larger composition which incorporates the three objects on show here, though with a minor variation in the position of the rose and a slightly different viewpoint. These differences suggest our painting is not merely a replica after a detail in the Norton Simon painting, but that it was produced as an independent work. It may have been cut down from a larger composition -- the left edge of the canvas is intact, while the other three sides appear to have been reduced (though we don't know by how much) -- but what we see now is probably close to its original size.

The painting was acquired in the 1930s by Kenneth Clark, Director of the National Gallery from 1934 to 1945, for his private collection. It did not come to the National Gallery until 1997, however, and was the first seventeenth-century Spanish still-life painting to enter our collection.

Style: Baroque
This is Cesare Alessandro Scaglia di Verrua (1592--1641), the second son of a count. He initially trained for the church and although he never took holy orders he nevertheless received income from various abbeys. The Abbot’s real career was as a diplomat; he served as ambassador for the House of Savoy in Rome, Paris and Madrid, and went on to become a diplomat and possibly a spy in the courts of Europe. As the Duke of Savoy's ambassador to the Vatican, he tried and failed to be made a cardinal. In 1624 he moved to Paris; by 1626 he was in London; in 1627 he was in the Low Countries; and in 1628 in Spain. For nearly a decade, between 1629 and 1637, he moved around the courts of Europe with Brussels and then Antwerp as his base. His diplomatic career served as cover for his secondary role as a gatherer of intelligence for the Duke of Savoy and Philip IV of Spain, and he was known in official documents as ‘Agent 2X’.

Scaglia, an ambitious, intelligent and subtle man, was also an art collector and patron of long standing who knew some of the greatest painters of the age; not just Van Dyck but Rubens, Jordaens, and Velázquez, with whom he travelled from Madrid to Genoa in 1629. He was also friendly with the English architect and cultural adviser to Charles I, Inigo Jones, and undertook art-buying expeditions for the king.

Van Dyck was another well-travelled figure, and he and Scaglia might have met as early as 1623 in Turin. The Abbot became one of his most important patrons and their relationship continued to the late 1630s. Scaglia’s will shows that he owned at least seven paintings, and possibly as many as ten, by Van Dyck – a mixture of portraits, religious works and a mythological scene.

Van Dyck’s portrait shows Abbot Scaglia as a somewhat severe figure leaning against a column, his ecclesiastical robes mimicking the togas of Roman statues. Preparatory drawings indicate that Van Dyck initially intended to show Scaglia seated but changed his mind (the chair remains in the background). His elongated pose gives him real presence and the painter imparts a sense of life and movement through the slight twist to the head, the lean into the column and the hands held at different levels. Van Dyck enlivens the severity of the Abbot’s black garb through the elegance of his hands and the way he lifts the hem of his robe just enough to show his shoes poking out. The dark 'halo' around Scaglia's head is the dark background to Van Dyck's initial head study, which is now emerging through the paint. Meanwhile, the eye contact Scaglia makes with the viewer confirms Rubens’s assessment of him as 'a man of the keenest intellect'. Van Dyck agrees: here is a man to be reckoned with.

Style: Baroque, Stuart
The subject of this picture is from the Life of Virgil by Tiberius Claudius Donatus (active about AD 400). The poet Virgil is reading the closing lines of Book VI of his epic poem the Aeneid to the Emperor Augustus and his sister Octavia. Augustus, in profile and crowned with laurel, leans forward in his throne which bears the Roman eagle.

Virgil reads his work aloud from a scroll on which the words of the text are legible. He describes Aeneas’ journey into the underworld, where the Trojan hero meets great Romans from the future. Among them is a young man with a shadow hanging over his head, who turns out to be Octavia’s recently deceased son Marcellus, causing her to clutch her heart and faint. Virgil’s hand, presumably raised for recital, is extended in concern towards Octavia. The lighting emphasises his gesture and draws attention to the emotions of his audience. A female attendant rushes to Octavia’s aid, while a young soldier, possibly one of Marcellus’ former comrades, clasps his hands and gazes upwards in anguish. Virgil’s patron, Maecenas, looks concerned that the performance has caused such distress.

This was an unusual subject in art of the period, bringing together Taillasson's interests in classical history, antique art, theatrical performance and the power of art and literature to move the emotions. The painting aroused considerable interest when it was exhibited at the 1787 Salon.

Taillasson has arranged the figures before an architectural backdrop, like actors on a stage. He has used the architecture to pace the composition, grouping figures and adding symbolic commentary on the action. The tiled pattern on the floor draws attention to the main figures by forming lines to their feet. The arch and column draw attention to Virgil and his patron, while the hanging drapery links the group of Augustus, Octavia and her attendant. The detailed treatment of architecture, costume and furniture demonstrates Taillasson’s concern for archaeological accuracy. The principal figures in the painting are all derived from classical sculptures. The size of the painting, meticulous detail and fine polished surface are characteristic of Taillasson’s work. The X-ray images of the picture suggests that he painted it over a discarded larger composition.

There is a pen and brown ink drawing by an unknown artist of Virgil reading the Aeneid in the Louvre, Paris, which appears to be connected to our painting, but it is stylistically unlike other known drawings by Taillasson.

Virgil reading the Aeneid (Virgile lisant l’Eneide) by Ingres, of 1812 (Musée des Augustins, Toulouse) may have been inspired by this picture, as the first recorded owner of the our painting was Duclos-Dufresnoy, the uncle of Charles-Marie Marcotte d’Argenteuil, one of the artist's most important patrons.

Style: Neoclassical