wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
The man in this portrait appears to have just turned away from the darkness surrounding him to take a look at us. His lips are slightly parted as though he might speak. He seems to be examining us -- or rather the artist -- with interest, his head slightly tilted. The striking contrast of his red hair against his plum-coloured tunic almost distracts our attention from the warts on his cheek. His cap is such a deep aubergine purple that it is hardly visible against the black background.

An inscription on the back of the panel names the man as Battista Fiera, doctor at the court of Mantua as well as a poet. We can't be sure it's really him, but it was thought to be in the seventeenth century: an engraving based on the painting formed the frontispiece (first page) of an edition of Fiera's Coena notis published in 1649. He was more successful as a doctor than a poet, becoming official physician to the Marquis and Marchioness of Mantua -- the Gonzaga family -- in 1508.

Fiera's writings show that he was interested in the city's artists and artistic projects. He featured Mantegna (Costa's predecessor as court artist to the Gonzaga) in a poem about the best way to represent the concept of justice in painting, and others seem to refer to now-lost paintings by the artist. Fiera also wrote about his admiration for Costa. He didn't just observe the cultural life of the city from afar, however. He acted as an adviser to Isabella d'Este, Marchioness of Mantua, in her plan to erect a statue of the city's most famous citizen, the ancient poet Virgil, for which she had Mantegna make designs. He also paid for the refurbishment of one of the city's arches, commissioning three terracotta sculptures of the heads of Francesco II Gonzaga, the modern Mantuan poet Battista Spagnoli and Virgil. He clearly had an affinity for classical antiquity and learning: in his will he expressed a desire to be buried beneath this arch, dressed in a toga and holding a book.

Costa had become court artist in 1506 and this portrait was once thought to have been made when his and Fiera's residencies coincided. We know that the artist was suffering from a venereal disease in 1508 and it's tempting to think that he might have received treatment from Fiera and offered him this painting in recompense -- but Costa himself, writing to his employer Marchese Francesco II Gonzaga, revealed that his doctor was called Antonio da Grato. In any case, this portrait is much closer in style to another of Costa's paintings in our collection,  A Concert, which dates to 1488--90. In both Costa used strong contrasts of light and shade to make the face appear solid and three-dimensional.

If this is a portrait of Battista Fiera, it might be the 'picture of the said late Battista' listed as being in his studiolo (study) in an inventory of his possessions made three days after his death in January 1540.

Style: Early Renaissance
This is one of Titian's earliest surviving works. It shows the Adoration of the Shepherds -- the flying angel in the distance announces Christ's birth to them. The holy family is shown at Christ's birthplace, accompanied by the ox and donkey. The kneeling Virgin supports the infant Christ on the manger, which is woven from sticks. Saint Joseph presents the baby to the young shepherd, who kneels in reverence.

It is unusual to find only one shepherd in attendance. The reason for this may be that Titian wished to emphasise the importance of Saint Joseph by making him central to the composition both in terms of action and position. The painting was probably made for a patron who was especially devoted to Saint Joseph, whose cult was strongly promoted in north Italy at this date -- altarpieces commissioned by confraternities dedicated to Saint Joseph often give him similar prominence. However, it is more likely that this picture was painted for a domestic setting.

Titian's lack of training in drawing the figure is clear from the size of Saint Joseph's head in relation to his torso, and the awkward way it is attached to his neck. None of the figures are convincingly articulated, again suggesting that this is a very early work. Titian has disguised the form of the Virgin's body with billowing folds of drapery. The tender expression of mother and child is emphasised by the soft white linen in which they are encircled. Titian has balanced this in the composition with the shepherd's rather impractical white shirt and leggings -- an indication that he was already thinking of colour and composition together, which would become a hallmark of his mature works.

The painting shows the influence of Titian's older colleague Giovanni Bellini, but the meditative style and atmospheric landscape is more closely related to work by Giorgione, with whom Titian worked around in the years before Giorgione's death in 1510. The dark, rocky bank with shrubs and weeds silhouetted against the dawn sky is a device often used in Giorgione's work. However, the figures and drapery style in The Holy Family with a Shepherd are more monumental and bolder in technique than anything Giorgione is known to have painted. The figures are not set against the landscape but are convincingly united with it, a feature that Titian was to develop further in works such as Noli me Tangere of about 1514, in which the landscape plays a part in the drama. It is difficult to be certain about the order in which these very early works by Titian were painted, as his figure style and the confidence of the drawing varies from picture to picture, but this painting shares some similarities with other works painted around 1510--11.

Much of the landscape, especially on the left, has been damaged by rubbing. The shadows of the Virgin's blue cloak have none of their original depth, making it now appear rather flat. The purple glaze has also been lost from Saint Joseph's robe, making the highlights appear more prominent.

Style: High Renaissance
This small painting of a girl in blue and a woman in a black coat standing on cliffs as they look out to sea was previously titled View over the Mediterranean. However, it has recently been proposed that this is a view of Trouville in Normandy, which was a popular destination for various artists including Boudin and Monet.

Although Corot went to Normandy three times in his early career, and also regularly visited the area towards the end of his life, it is unlikely that he painted this picture. Despite some similarity with his later Normandy paintings, the picture has little in common stylistically with known works by Corot and lacks the quality of his work. The absence of interaction between the two people on the shore and the rather crude painting in some areas, especially the sea, suggests this is instead the work of a follower or student of Corot.

Style: Barbizon
This painting carries many of the hallmarks of an Italianate picture: a soft Mediterranean light, the sun still warm although night is falling, distant hills not likely to be seen in a flat Dutch landscape, and idealised peasants with their garments loosened and walking at a leisurely pace. As far as we know, Adriaen van de Velde never went to Italy, but he knew artists who had and who allowed him access to their work.

Van de Velde’s depiction of the young man leading the cow is particularly skilled and sensitive: both have real weight and substance, yet show delicate details of texture, like the feathery hairs on the cow’s face and the flowing folds of the man’s shirt. This realism comes from the many superb drawings, mostly in red chalk, that van de Velde made from life.

Style: Baroque
This painting sets out to tease us: we are clearly invited to wonder about the nature of the relationship between the two figures. They sit close. They seem deeply comfortable in each other’s presence. The sense of harmony is even echoed by their mirrored body language -- each has one hand raised and the other lowered.

Our gaze has disturbed this harmony, and we are left to puzzle over the young woman's reaction to us. She looks up as though startled, her lips slightly apart. While she meets our eye, she does not seem comfortable with our presence. We might detect a sense of embarrassment, of guilt even. Perhaps her raised hand is a defensive reaction to being discovered in this intimate situation. But perhaps not. Her parted lips could indicate that she is singing a note for her partner to tune to and her hand is raised to help her concentrate as she does so.

While he leaves these questions open, Schalcken has included one or two clues which might tempt us to resolve them. The painting hanging on the wall lies in deep shadow, but we can just make out a pair of naked legs in it. Schalcken has gone to great trouble to demonstrate his skill in depicting the sensuousness of the silk, velvet, fur and lace of the woman’s coat and dress -- but what really catches the light are her glowing cheek, bare arms, neck and cleavage.

She is not immodestly dressed, but there is a certain emphasis on her sensuality. It may not be going too far to suggest that all this has been noticed by her companion, however much he might appear to be absorbed in adjusting the tuning peg of his cittern (a sort of small lute). An amorous or even an erotic scenario seems to be implied. This would also explain the pink rose which is placed so obviously on the table in the foreground. Roses, like music, were -- as today -- associated with romantic love.

We know also that Schalcken’s customers were predisposed to enjoy uncertainty of this kind. Scenes of music making were a popular genre in seventeenth-century Holland. Sometimes the theme was obviously bawdy, sometimes apparently innocent, sometimes -- as here -- more uncertain. But part of the reason they were popular was because of these tensions, and in that they reflected real life. Musical gatherings were perfectly respectable social activities, and were considered a good way for young people to meet. There was always potential for flirtation, and even casual relationships.

However we decide to interpret the scene, this would not have been a portrait of a real couple in a real situation. We can be sure of that because of the setting. The massive column and swagged curtain in the background is stylised rather than realistic. The painted arch at the top of the painting also adds to a sense of artifice. Schalcken probably borrowed this particular device from his teacher, Gerrit Dou, who made a series of 'niche' paintings set in architectural frames.

Style: Baroque
The low view in this large painting opens up a vast expanse of blue sky wreathed in sunlit clouds and laced with an intricate pattern of masts, sails, flags and spars. The masts are upright, keeping the composition on an even keel that the draped sails and angular spars might otherwise disturb. Between the boats moored on either side of the waterway, the calm sea shimmers like glass.

This is the largest and most elaborate of the pictures by Willem van de Velde the Younger in the National Gallery's collection. Painted with the artist's usual accuracy and fine detail, the depiction of a marine occasion fairly common in a seafaring nation like seventeenth century Holland becomes spectacular and exciting. Admiralty officials are involved, perhaps going across the Zuiderzee to visit the fleet lying in the Texel, an area of the sea off Friesland.

The central vessel is a Statenjacht (state yacht) flying the Dutch colours. On the stern are the arms of the Province of Holland and, above them, those of Amsterdam. The puff of smoke is cannon fire, a salute to the officials approaching in the barge alongside, which also carries the arms of Amsterdam. Up on the high deck, trumpeters sound a fanfare. It is answered by a fanfare from a second barge close to us, which bears the arms of the admiralty on the stern.

On the right -- and conspicuous among the many vessels surrounding the Statenjacht -- is a small boyer (or pleasure) yacht. The two men on board turn to watch a third as he puts on his gloves, preparing to join them from the skiff being steadied by a seaman holding on to the side. A woman in the stern looks up expectantly, waiting for her turn to board. They are well dressed and their boat is prettily decorated with gold helmeted heads of mythical warriors. Overhead flies a plain white flag, unknown among the official colours of Holland at the time. The striped pennant signifies a private craft -- its blue panel is decorated with a gold wreath, the initials 'W/VV' in the centre.

These distinctive initials and the variation from the normal blue, white and red of the Dutch flags flying all around them would suggest that Willem the Younger is depicting his family in their yacht. Whether the three male figures are meant to be portraits of Willem the Elder and his two sons is open to question. Both Willem the Younger and his brother Adriaen worked in their father’s studio. Adriaen, a successful landscape painter, sometimes contributed figures to his brother’s pictures, as he did in The Shore at Scheveningen.

Many of Willem the Elder’s exquisite drawings remain in the maritime museums of the world. From them, it’s possible to conclude that he often drew beautifully detailed ship portraits that were transferred into paintings by his son, a less-accomplished draughtsman but by far the better painter of the two.

Style: Baroque
All seems calm in the foreground of this picture -- Saint Joseph leads a placid (and delightfully hairy) donkey on which the Virgin Mary sits feeding the Christ Child. But look closer and the atmosphere changes. This is a family fleeing a massacre.

Joseph turns to look anxiously over his shoulder at what they have escaped. In the distance, bands of armed men are coming out of a gates of a city. The leading group has already reached a small hamlet and started on their terrible task. A house is on fire; in the streets women scream in horror over small corpses or try to snatch their children away from the soldiers. The city is meant to be Jerusalem and the village Bethlehem, and this is the Massacre of the Innocents. King Herod, having learnt of the birth of a future King of the Jews, sent his men to kill all boys under two in Bethlehem and the surrounding area -- an effort to get rid of this threat to his throne. But Joseph was warned in a dream and escaped with his family into Egypt.

The story is taken from the Gospel of Matthew (2: 13--14), with various apocryphal texts -- such as La Vie de Nostre Benoit Sauveur Ihesuscrist, written in around 1400 -- adding details. Here, one of the soldiers questions a man who stands by a field of wheat. When the holy family were fleeing they came across a peasant sowing his crops; Christ put his hand into the man's sack and threw a fistful of seeds. These immediately sprang up as tall and ripe as if the wheat had been growing for a year. When Herod's soldiers came upon the peasant, they asked him if he had seen a mother and child pass that way; he answered, 'yes, when I was sowing this wheat'. Perplexed, the soldiers went back to Jerusalem. The same story is told in the background of Patinir's  Landscape with the Rest on the Flight into Egypt.

In the woods on the right a broken statue tumbles from a pedestal. As told in La Vie de Nostre Benoit Sauveur Ihesuscrist, when Christ entered Egypt the 'idols of the Saracens' fell to the ground. The monkey in the tree on the right could be an image of fallen man whom Christ has come to save: monkeys were often used in medieval art as a way of showing man at his worst. The dying tree on the right could either be a reference to a prophecy by Ezekiel that was understood as a prediction of Christ's birth to the Virgin Mary -- 'I have made the dry tree flourish...' (Ezekiel 17: 24) -- or a symbol of the Cross on which Christ would die.

This panel was possibly once part of a huge altarpiece painted by Goossen van der Weyden for export to Spain or Portugal, with a large central image surrounded by smaller scenes of the life of Christ.

Style: High Renaissance
This scene of two men and a young woman making music is far removed from the representations of everyday life by Jan Steen and other Dutch genre painters of the seventeenth century. The trio are seated on a wide terrace, possibly of a large country house, overlooking an impressive formal garden and an extensive flat landscape. They don’t quite seem to belong in their surroundings.

The young woman is sitting with outstretched legs on the tiled floor, casually leaning her elbow on the stone parapet behind her. She is singing from the songbook in her lap. Her clothes are in slight disarray: the laces of her bodice are somewhat loosened and her reddish-brown skirt is pushed up, revealing the yellow skirt underneath. The men, one holding a glass of wine and the other tuning a lute, both wear old-fashioned costumes with outdated collars and hats. While the lutenist on the right is concentrating solely on his instrument, the older man is clearly more interested in the woman, leaning over and staring at her. A bottle of wine stands near the stone parapet, and orange peel is scattered about the terrace: there is a basket of oranges at the woman's feet.

In several of Steen’s paintings, figures appear in fanciful and archaic costumes that clearly distinguish them from everyday contemporary life. Here, the older man's doublet, broadly striped sleeves and hat are reminiscent of late sixteenth-century fashion. Costumes of this type were used on the comic stage in Steen’s time, but in this painting he has not depicted wandering performers resting on their travels, as has been suggested in the past. He has employed these kinds of theatrical costumes to emphasise the comical character of his protagonists. The contemporary viewer would have recognised the woman’s admirer as the popular stock character of the old lecher, drunk on wine and hoping for the affection of a woman half his age. This character was well known from plays performed by the Dutch chambers of rhetoric (amateur literary societies). The woman’s body language makes it clear that his feelings won’t be reciprocated; she seems quite oblivious to him. The lutenist, no less drunk, as his red nose and face suggest, is so immersed in his play that he doesn’t notice what is going on around him. It's not apparent if he is straining his eyes to read the sheet of music on the ledge before him, but his squint is intended to add to his comical appearance.

Steen probably painted this scene in around 1670, the year he returned from Haarlem to his native Leiden. He lived in Leiden for the next nine years, until the end of his life.

Style: Baroque
Guardi delighted in capturing the charm of his beloved Venice, and here he has given the city a soft, powdery appearance and dreamy atmosphere. As in its companion picture, Venice: The Punta della Dogana with S. Maria della Salute, trade is the focus in the foreground of this painting, with Venice's grand architecture beyond. For centuries, Venice had been a thriving commercial centre and a popular destination on the main trading routes across the Mediterranean; as an island, everything inhabitants needed came by boat.

In the left corner, a large barge filled with goods is at anchor; its sail is being lowered. Guardi frequently framed his scenes using a curved white sail in the foreground, as in Venice: The Guidecca with the Zitelle (he also sometimes used a mast without a sail, like in View of the Venetian Lagoon with the Tower of Malghera). The basin of San Marco and the quayside are a hive of activity. A group of tightly packed fishing boats or trading vessels on the far right almost merge with the shops behind; the men are little more than daubs of colour, but Guardi still managed to portray their industriousness.

Guardi's figures are not painted in great detail, but they are skilfully placed across the composition to draw the eye in all directions: some row, others sightsee or work. Gondoliers ferry passengers and await clients beside the Molo (a broad stone quay), with the Doge’s Palace and campanile (bell tower) of San Marco, the city's famous cathedral, beyond. The faint blue domes of the cathedral seem to almost dissolve into the sky. A large galley (state ship) with a gold and red striped awning is moored nearby. This was the vessel used by the doge, the Venetian head of state, on all formal occasions (other than the Ascension Day ceremony, when a much larger boat was commissioned).

Lively brushstrokes evoke the bustle of the city at work, from the movement of boats as they glide across the lagoon to that of the tiny figures dotted along the quayside. Architectural details are merely suggested -- on the Doge's Palace, brown outlines hint at the archways, raised colonnade and ducal gallery above. Different parts of the composition merge into one another: the sky and buildings, the quay with the water, and lagoon with boats and their passengers.

Style: Neoclassical
The Virgin Mary is seated on the ground in the valley of a north Italian mountainous landscape. The naked infant Christ sits upright on her lap, holding two cherries, symbolising the fruit of paradise. Two angels kneel before him, their arms crossed in adoration and hands clasped in prayer. In the distance, hilltop fortresses perch on rocky crags above a town spanning a river.

Images of the Virgin seated on the ground in a landscape are known as the Madonna of Humility. This type of composition was favoured by Previtali's teacher, the Venetian artist Giovanni Bellini, and can be seen in his Madonna of the Meadow. It was intended to express the Virgin's humility and her presence in everyday life. X-ray images of the painting reveal that the Virgin originally looked out at the viewer, but Previtali repainted her face. Now none of the figures look at each other or us, and their distant gazes give the painting a still, contemplative atmosphere.

Previtali used shell gold, made with real gold powder, throughout the painting: in delicate lines on the feathers of the angel's wings, for the haloes and the decorations of all the robes, even in the trees and bushes on the hillsides and in the highlights on the scaffolding poles in the far left distance. Highly characteristic of Previtali's early work, this use of real gold paint was not just decorative but was intended to express divine illumination.

In the clouds you can see where the paint has been marked by the artist's finger and thumb -- this is also highly characteristic of Previtali's early work and can be seen in The Virgin and Child adored by Two Angels. The distinctive forms of the landscape, especially the branching of the bare tree, are also typical of Previtali's early style, as are the small weeds amid the foreground stones.

The painting is based on a composition by Boccacio Boccaccino, The Virgin and Child with Angels of about 1500. The whereabouts of Boccaccino's painting is now unknown, but a photograph of it exists from 1929. The chief difference between the two paintings is that Previtali's Christ is active, sitting up facing the angels and holding cherries, whereas Boccaccino's Christ Child is passive: lying down facing away from the angels, his head supported by the Virgin who is offering him an apple. The landscapes are also different.

It was not unusual in the Renaissance for contracts for altarpieces to stipulate that an artist should follow an established model. Artists generally felt free to depart in places from the given example, and where they did follow it exactly it was perhaps because the image was regarded as sacred. Previtali's painting looks like an attempt to repeat a recent success such as one might expect if he were working in Boccaccino's workshop. However, there is no evidence that he did, and so his decision to copy Boccaccino's composition is unusual and unexplained. It may have been at the suggestion of the patron.

The painting was transferred from panel onto canvas, which has caused some damage. It has also suffered from damage caused by aggressive cleaning during the mid-nineteenth century or earlier.

Style: High Renaissance