wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
When exhibited in 1910 this painting was called 'The Happy Mother' and was said to be a work by Fragonard -- neither the title nor the attribution were accurate.

The pretty young mother is sitting in a beam of light at a table with three of her infants wriggling on her lap. An older child is seated at the table, while another plays in the shadows on the floor and a baby is rocked in its cradle by an old woman. Although the mother’s expression is hard to make out due to the sketchy nature of the painting, she does not appear to be obviously joyful -- in fact she looks completely overwhelmed and exhausted.

Through the archway, food is being prepared in the shadowy kitchen by a male cook and a woman holding a plate, and a maid seems to be serving the child at the table. A large dish, a jug and a straw-covered flask of wine are also on the table. The young servant’s headdress and the flask of wine suggest that the artist who painted this work was in or knew Italy. They were clearly familiar with Greuze's painting The Well-Beloved Mother (private collection, Madrid), as the group of the mother and children is very similar. The artist may have known the painting through Jean Massard’s print published (in reverse) in 1775. There was a great fashion for scenes of mothers and children in eighteenth-century France, much encouraged by the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who had a significant impact on thinking about education and childhood, advocating a more 'natural' approach.

The young mother's bright red skirt and the grandeur of the room, however plain, together with the number of her servants suggest that the household is quite wealthy. Perhaps the beam of light is intended to represent heaven looking favourably upon the young lady in blessing her with such a large and healthy family, and to highlight her sacrifice and devotion in accepting the role of mother. The dog at her feet, a symbol of marital fidelity, may represent her dutiful spirit and devotion to her husband and children. However, as she gazes blankly into the light, her boisterous infants squirming on her lap, she looks as though she somehow didn’t imagine her life panning out quite like this. Either the painting is intended to suggest the noble self-sacrifice of the new 'natural' motherhood, or it represents a critique of Rousseau's fashionable new ideas.

We do not know who painted this picture. Although Fragonard painted sketchy interior scenes with working women during his first stay in Italy in 1756--61, the brushwork here does not resemble his extremely fluid way of painting and the setting is less picturesque. Hubert Robert (1733--1808) was also working in Rome and painting scenes similar to this at the time. Although some aspects of this painting are similar to Robert’s Laundress and Child (Clark Art Institute, Williamstown), notably the dog and the infant on the left, the differences are too great to make it likely that this painting is by him either.

Style: Neoclassical
A elegant bearded saint in red and blue robes holds an open book. His halo, now rather worn, was burnished gold incised with decorative patterns; the edges and lining of his cloak, his sleeves and his neckline glimmer with touches of gold. His book with its fluttering pages has a dark green binding and gilded fore-edges. We are not sure who he is, though he might well be Saint Mark, who was traditionally shown with a dark beard and curly dark hair (as in Saints Francis and Mark), and holding a book, his Gospel.

This small panel seems to have come from the upper tier of a polyptych painted by the Venetian artistMichele Giambono. A number of other figures, both full and half length, against blue backgrounds and apparently from the same altarpiece, survive in collections around the world. The central panel seems to have been a large Saint Michael, seated on a throne (Berenson Collection, Villa I Tatti, Settignano). We are not sure where the altarpiece was originally, although several panels were in Padua in the nineteenth century.

Giambono was one of the last  painters working in the style known as International Gothic. He was not interested in the forms of classical art or in conveying emotion through expression, as Venetian Renaissance artists such as Giovanni Bellini were. He painted in egg tempera rather than oil, and preferred the graceful lines, decorative colours and shimmering gold of earlier painters such as Gentile da Fabriano and Pisanello, both of whom had worked in Venice. Carlo Crivelli imitated Giambono's bright colours, intricate patterns and elegant style. The wavy line of darker blue which runs around the figure shows where the gilded frame would have been.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
An elderly man with a fantastically curled beard holds a book and leans on a stick, and wears a monastic habit (a long, loose garment). This is Anthony Abbot, the founder of Christian monasticism.

Born in Egypt in the third century, Saint Anthony gave up his wealth to live in the desert as a hermit, and organised his followers into communities devoted to prayer and manual labour. In the Middle Ages he was extremely popular both as an example of ascetic life -- that is, renouncing worldly riches and pleasure -- and because he was believed to be able to protect both humans and animals against disease. Some diseases, like ergotism and erysipelas, were known as Saint Anthony's fire.

The saint leans on a wooden staff in the shape of a tau-cross (a cross shaped like the letter T), his attribute. The Hospitallers of Saint Anthony, who looked after people affected by skin diseases, wore black robes decorated with a blue tau-cross. He holds a bound book with blue clasps, which has been rotated so we see it from an acute angle, giving an illusion of depth. The studs on the binding were drawn in but never painted.

He almost certainly once formed part of a polyptych (an altarpiece made of several panels) and was probably placed on the left of a central panel of the Virgin and Child. Images of the Virgin and saints were popular on altarpieces in the Middle Ages, as Christians believed they could intercede with God on behalf of humanity. Anthony stands under a decorative gilded arch, with pointed cusps on the inside and scrolling pastiglia foliage in the spandrels. The outer rectangular moulding is modern; the arch and cusps are original but have been regilded.

Paintings were rarely signed at this period, so style and technique help us identify the work of different artists. The cusps and the pastiglia foliage are hallmarks of Giovanni di Nicola's work; the idea of foliage in the spandrels comes from Sienese painting -- and di Nicola was a pupil of the Sienese painter Lippo Memmi. In the fourteenth century artists often used different shaped punches to decorate gilded haloes, which can also help identify who a panel is by: if the same punches occur in two panels they might well be by the same person (although craftsmen could have shared tools). Many of the punches used on this panel are also found on other panels by di Nicola.

The panel is dated to about 1350 because di Nicola's only signed work (a Virgin and Child in the Museo Nazionale di San Matteo, Pisa) can be dated to then. In 1358, at around the same time,  a 'Iohannes Nicole pictor' -- pictor is Latin for painter -- was elected to the communal council in Pisa.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
This is a fragment of a wall-painting by Pietro Lorenzetti, who, with his brother,Ambrogio, decorated some of the most important religious and public buildings in Siena. The millstone at the woman's right side, now only faintly visible, could mean that she is Saint Elizabeth of Hungary. In a miracle said to have taken place after her death, Elizabeth cured a man’s hand that had been damaged by a millstone. Furthermore, Elizabeth is often depicted with a lapful of roses: the way the fingers of her right hand bend suggests that she may be lifting a garment to preserve the flowers in her lap, but the fragment is too damaged to be certain. Though she joined a Franciscan lay order and chose a life of poverty, she is often shown wearing a crown as a sign of her royal status. Here it is paired with a nun's habit. Traces of paint from her dress reveal it was made up of black, yellow and some red to create a purple-brown shade.

Like A Group of Four Poor Clares and A female Saint (the Annunciate Virgin or one of the Marys?), it is likely that this fresco fragment came from the chapter house of the convent church of San Francesco, Siena. Other frescoes in the chapter house were The Crucifixion and The resurrected Christ, both painted by Pietro. His brother Ambrogio painted a further two: Pope Boniface receiving Louis of Toulouse as a Novice and The Martyrdom of the Franciscans. The cycle of images may also have included The Stigmatisation of Saint Francis -- the moment the saint in prayer received the wounds of Christ, caused by the nails of the Crucifixion.

The figure is shown only in bust length and is surrounded by a hexagonal shape; the outline may have been painted blue or green but the paint has been lost. It would have formed part of the border decoration of a scene. Its decorative, rather than narrative, role and its relatively poor quality of painting suggest that it was painted by a member of Pietro’s workshop.

The fragment was purchased by the archaeologist, diplomat, MP and National Gallery trustee, Sir Austen Henry Layard, who left it to the gallery in his will. As a member of the Arundel Society, created to document and preserve Italian frescoes, he was interested in fresco as a medium. Layard claimed that he bought these fragments ‘from a man who had cut them out of the wall’ but he mistakenly thought they had come from the church of S. Agostino in Siena.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
The Samian Sibyl was one of 12 pagan sibyls (or priestesses) who, like the Old Testament prophets, were said to have foretold the coming of Christ. The Samian Sibyl, named after the Greek island of Samos, was an oracle of Apollo and prophesied that Christ would be born to a virgin mother. A putto unfurls a scroll with the text ‘SALVE CASTA SYON PER MVLTAQVE PASSA PVELLA’ and ‘SYBILLA SAMIA’, which translates as: ‘Hail, chaste Sion who has undergone much suffering; Samian Sibyl’. This inscription refers to the suffering of the Virgin Mary.Sibyls were popular in Italian art and, from the fifteenth century onwards were commonly shown with books or scrolls, alluding to the Sybilline Books in which their prophecies were recorded. With her elbow propped on a book, the Samian Sibyl here rests her head in her left hand as she concentrates on the volume she holds open with the other. A large book sits on the table in front of her, open to reveal an elegant script that demonstrates Guercino’s attention to detail in the still-life elements of this picture. The sibyls became particularly popular subjects in the seventeenth century and Guercino, like Domenichino, painted numerous pictures of them throughout his career, especially in the late 1640s and early 1650s.By this stage of his career, Guercino’s work was greatly influenced by Guido Reni who, like Guercino, was active in Bologna. Reni’s austere classicism, evident in The Rape of Europa, is echoed in both The Samian Sibyl with a Putto and The Cumaean Sibyl with a Putto. The billowing effect of the putto's drapery is also reminiscent of Reni’s style. In this painting, Guercino has carefully constructed the form of the Samian Sibyl beneath the layers of fabric: her left leg is crossed over her right and the texture, folds and fall of her garment are expertly modelled.Guercino produced this painting in 1651 for Gioseffo Locatelli of Cesena, as a companion to King David (now in a private collection). He had first painted The Cumaean Sibyl with a Putto for Locatelli but, before it could be sent to him, it was seen in Guercino’s studio by Prince Mattias de' Medici, who convinced the artist to sell it to him instead. Guercino produced this painting for Locatelli as a replacement and his decision to create a new composition rather than an identical copy of The Cumaean Sibyl, is a testament to his originality as a painter.The frame on The Samian Sibyl with a Putto is exceptionally fine. It was designed by James 'Athenian' Stuart in the mid-eighteenth century and matches that of its former pendant King David, with which it was displayed at Spencer House in London.

Style: Baroque, Academic
This oil sketch of a maid combing a young woman’s hair is one of several representations of the subject by Puvis de Chavannes that relate to a larger painting, The Toilette of 1883 (Musée d'Orsay, Paris). The topic of a woman at her toilette has a long history in art, for example Giovanni Bellini’s celebrated Naked Young Woman in Front of the Mirror, painted in 1515 (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna). The subject relates to no specific incident or literary text but rather gave artists the opportunity to paint a beautiful woman in a moment of private repose and reverie. This genre became very popular in England in the late nineteenth century, when such pictures were called 'Dreams of fair women', and appeared frequently in the work of painters such as Frederic, Lord Leighton and Albert Moore.

Although Puvis was not a member of any particular artistic grouping he was often associated with the Symbolists, artists who conjured up mysterious dream worlds which could have erotic overtones. His finished painting edges further in this direction than this sketch. Where the sketch crops in close to the figures of the maid and the young woman and has a subdued tonality, the finished work shows more of the figures, while the dominant russet background has been changed to blue and the young woman's hair to blonde.

The sketch has an immediacy that suggests Puvis worked from the live model, but he smoothed out the particularities for the finished work, presenting a more idealised woman. The artist made something of a speciality of pictures of young women in vaguely classical gowns, and versions of the girl in this painting can be found elsewhere in his work: in Mary Magdalene of 1897 (Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest), in Young Girls at the Seaside of 1879 (Musée d’Orsay, Paris), and The Fisherman’s Family of 1887 (this was destroyed in the Second World War, but an oil sketch for it exists, now in the Art Institute of Chicago).

Puvis’s aim with this picture is both aesthetic and suggestive. He presents an image of gentle beauty but is also prompting the viewer to wonder what the young woman is thinking: about love, perhaps, or what her future might hold. Although A Maid combing a Woman’s Hair is just a preparatory sketch -- the paint is thin and quickly applied with long brushstrokes, the hands and the face of the maid lack detail and the background is blocked in -- Puvis clearly thought the picture had enough impact to sign it, which was the usual practice with a finished work.

The motif of a young woman having her hair combed had a particular appeal to Degas, Puvis’s slightly younger contemporary, and he too preferred to paint a red-headed woman, as in Combing the Hair ('La Coiffure') of about 1896.

Style: Symbolist
This is an early work by Haccou, who was born and trained in Middelburg in the Netherlands. He was a pupil of Johannes Hermanus Koekkoek (1778–1851). After travelling in Switzerland, France and Germany, Haccou settled in London.

Two peasants converse on a track that runs past two cottages; one man is seated while the other stands leaning on his stick. Behind them a wagon laden with hay is pulled along by a chestnut horse accompanied by a labourer with a long staff. The hay cart suggests that this scene is set at the end of summer, when the meadows are cut and the hay brought in to feed the livestock over the coming winter.

The cottage in the right foreground is simple and constructed from planks of wood on the gable end depicted. It has a brick chimney and tiled roof, although the area above the gable is thatched. It has a plank door high up in the wall, which is perhaps the opening to a hayloft. It may be that the wooden and thatched end of the cottage is an attached barn for the livestock. A narrow grass path runs up to it through the glade of silver birch trees. The trees, especially the foliage, are meticulously painted in this carefully composed and finely painted view.

Two shaggy goats sit on the path in the foreground, while a third, or possibly a sheep, wanders off to graze. A white cow stands beneath the birch trees in the middle ground with its back to us. In the distance, across the fields, are the spires and towers of a small town.

The atmosphere is one of calm, celebrating the slow pace of country life in all its picturesque charm. Perhaps this picture was painted for or bought by a city-dweller nostalgic for the simplicity and peace of rustic life.

Style: Neoclassical
A white cow, once a mortal woman named Io, emerges from the shadows at the edge of this picture (its face is somewhat reduced as the work has been trimmed slightly on all sides). Io's misfortune at having caught the eye of Jupiter is told by the Roman poet Ovid in the Metamorphoses. Wishing to protect her from the wrath of Juno, his jealous wife, Jupiter transformed Io into a cow. The plan backfired when Juno took an interest in the animal and decided to claim it for herself, setting Argus Panoptes (meaning 'many-eyed' Argus) to guard it.

Now trapped, Io was condemned to live as a cow until Jupiter intervened, sending his son Mercury to kill Argus and free her. Mercury first had to send the guard to sleep. Disguised as a shepherd -- he had stolen some sheep along the way -- he began to play his reed pipe to the old man, who was captivated by the sound, until he 'saw that every eye had succumbed and their light was lost in sleep'. With his curved sword, Mercury swiftly cut off Argus' many-eyed head.

Loth's painting depicts the calm moment before Argus' sudden and violent murder. According to Ovid, Mercury had abandoned his usual costume of a winged hat and sandals, but Loth has shown him wearing a cap with a short wing just visible above his ear, letting the viewer in on the trickery. Perhaps he preferred to do this than to paint Argus with more than two eyes.

This is one of the earliest works Loth made in Venice, where he arrived in 1656. Strong contrasts of light and darkness imbue the scene with a mysterious and sinister air, which suits the subject. The limited but bright areas of light are reserved for the figures' faces and hands, and for Mercury's muscular arm -- it has the quality of a classical sculpture, which Loth would no doubt have seen during his time in Rome in 1653. While there he would also have seen works by the early seventeenth-century painter Caravaggio, who developed this style of painting contrasting areas of intense light and deep shade, which was known as tenebrism.

Style: Baroque
In western culture during the eighteenth century, Asia generally referred to the eastern world, also known as the Orient. This is the subject of Maulbertsch's painting, here portrayed in the form of an allegory (when figures or objects are used to signify abstract concepts or a moral meaning). A woman wrapped in pastel-coloured robes and wearing a white turban gazes invitingly towards us. She holds a pole decorated with a golden crescent moon and star, symbols of the powerful Ottoman Empire, which at this time controlled much of eastern Europe, as well as western Asia and north Africa. Her male companion wears a magnificent, richly embroidered costume and carries a curved sword.

Above, the ghostly figure of Venus holds a flaming torch, representing the morning star -- another reference to the Orient. The scene is lit by a spotlight that emphasises the two main figures, as well as an elegant stone fountain. A large large jewelled turban, a quiver of arrows and a shield rest on the fountain's edge, evoking conquest. Figures with a camel appear in the darkness on the left, while on the right a crouching man pours coffee. His hairstyle appears to be characteristic of Ukrainian Cossacks; he may be a captive.

This carefully composed scene is made up of a series of dynamic curves: the graceful lines of the fountain are echoed by the crescent shape of the retreating darkness, and the long arc of the stream of hot coffee is set off by the curve of the shield above. Despite the spontaneity in Maulbertsch’s dazzling brushwork, this oil sketch is probably a finished work. His expressive command of colour and his fluid application of paint is comparable to that of the great Venetian painter, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, who famously depicted Asia in his ceiling fresco at Würzburg in Germany, completed in 1753. Maulbertsch would not have known this work, however, as he painted his sketch around 1750, at the beginning of his career. Maulbertsch continued Tiepolo's legacy in the French and Italian rococo influences that prevailed in southern Germany and Austria throughout the eighteenth century.

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, such representations of the Orient were common in depictions of the four continents -- Asia, Europe, America, and Africa. This picture may have been conceived as part of a series of four, though no other related works are known.

Style: Rococo, Neoclassical
This contemplative saint wears a bishop's hat called a mitre, and carries a crozier (based on a shepherd's crook) part of the official dress of bishops -- it was a symbol of their authority to guide and lead a 'flock' of Christians. He has been identified as Saint Augustine, the influential theologian and philosopher who was Bishop of Hippo (in north Africa) in the fourth century.

Zoppo has taken care to show variations in the texture and colour of the saint's hair, from the dark, shiny curls on his head to his lighter, wispier beard. The folds of the draperies are so soft and light that they appear to be made of a very fine weight silk; bishop's robes would actually have been made from thick textiles, in reality appearing far more rigid. This effect is enhanced by the use of pastel colours: the cope (cloak) is a dusky grape colour while the book is a pale sky blue. Even the patterns are subtle -- the white fabric of the mitre, for example, is decorated with a barely visible motif in silver-grey, evoking the effect of a woven silk damask. This overall delicacy, which extends to the saint's calm concentration, was typical of Zoppo's painting.

The panel formed the uppermost part of an altarpiece made of many panels (a polyptych), and as it would have been viewed from below it makes sense that we can see the underside of the book. It was probably from the altarpiece described in 1581 in the church of Santa Giustina, Venice, signed by Zoppo and dated 1468. The saint's identification as Augustine is based partly on the fact that Santa Giustina had been an Augustinian church since 1448.  Three other panels from the same altarpiece have been identified: Saint Peter (National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.), Saint Paul (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford) and Saint Jerome (Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore).

Style: Early Renaissance
This work is a badly damaged fragment of a larger fresco. It shows the Virgin Mary holding the naked infant Christ on her knee. The Christ Child raises his hand in a gesture of blessing while looking down towards the left. The direction of his gaze and that of the Virgin suggests that he may originally have been blessing another figure included in the fresco, possibly the kneeling donor who commissioned it.

The fresco was probably painted by a Milanese artist influenced by the work of Leonardo da Vinci, an echo noticeable in the appearance of the Virgin and Christ Child. It is painted in the style of Boltraffio, who was an assistant and follower of Leonardo's, and also resembles the work of the Master of the Pala Sforzesca, who painted an altarpiece now in the Brera, Milan. However, the picture is too damaged to be able to say for certain who painted it.

Style: High Renaissance