wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
This is the second panel in a series of three based on a fourteenth-century story about a peasant girl named Griselda. She was put through a series of cruel tests by her rich husband, the Marquis Gualtieri di Saluzzo -- we see three of them in this painting. Griselda's loyalty throughout her ordeal earned her fame and respect, and she became a model of wifely virtue. The paintings were commissioned for a room in the Spanocchi family palace in Siena, and were probably made to celebrate two family marriages which took place in January 1494.

The Marquis first told Griselda that he had ordered the killing of their children; in the background on the left, two tiny babies in white swaddling bandages are secretly carried away. Next, he pretended that he had annulled their marriage. Under the elaborately carved and gilded loggia (arcade) at the centre of the scene, Griselda, in the same fine gown she wore  at her wedding, places her wedding ring on the cloth held by the man conducting the sham annulment ceremony. We see her again in the next arcade, half-undressed: now divorced, she returns her beautiful clothes. Expelled from the company of the courtiers, wearing only her underdress, she returns to her father's house. Her final appearance on this panel shows her walking up the winding path to the stone farmhouse.

As in the panels showing the couple's marriage and reunion, the artist has included an array of animals here, this time quite exotic: a bear, tied by its neck to one of the columns, licks its paw, while a peacock scours the ground for food nearby. He didn't paint the scenes in chronological order and probably worked on this one last. It is the most sophisticated in its planning and bolder in its execution. Our artist seems to have drawn inspiration from the works made by Signorelli for Sienese patrons, as he was working in the city at around the same time. Signorelli was interested in perspective; our painter drew a perspectival grid on the panel -- still faintly visible on the pavement -- so that he could position each figure and object in perfect relation to the others, giving the scene a sense of three-dimensionality.

The figures, too, are drawn differently to those in Reunion, the first panel the artist painted. They are more varied and flexible -- there's a sense of movement in the Marquis' stride at the annulment ceremony, and the figure with his back to us in the left foreground artfully balances his weight on one leg, causing his left hip to dip. His pose recalls that of one of the figures in Signorelli's Bichi Altarpiece (Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio). Some elements, like the shading of the robes -- for example, in the central figures of the Marquis and Griselda -- also resemble Signorelli's style. The draperies in general are less decorative and more natural than those in Reunion; another nod to Signorelli's simple but bold style.

Style: Early Renaissance
The young girl in this portrait seems a little shy and tentative. Her eyes are wide and enquiring, her eyebrows slightly raised. She holds out the fan a little awkwardly as if uncertain what to do with it. The hand placed on her stomach almost appears to steady her -- she's not presenting her glittering, beaded stomacher for admiration as women in other paintings of the time do.

The girl's identity is unknown, as is her age. To judge by her dress and jewels she comes from a wealthy, probably noble, family. At one time it was thought she was from the Braganza family, who were related to Portuguese royalty, but no confirmation has been found. Whoever she is, Bartholomeus van der Helst has certainly done justice to her elaborate costume, from the silk damask of her gown and the translucent organza over the tiers of her expensive lace collar to the softly glowing pearls at neck and wrists. Particularly striking are the four rows of pearls that stretch from beneath the blue bow on her chest to a second bow on her shoulder, an unusual and seemingly purposeful way of showing them off. Natural pearls like these were as expensive as diamonds.

Is there a picture of an intended husband in the pendant locket on her chest? Does the ring on her finger mean she's betrothed? Girls as young as eight could be promised or even married at the time. But while the ring is prominently displayed, wearing it on the fourth finger of the left hand didn't necessarily mean such an arrangement. These questions, though easily answered when the portrait was painted, can't be answered now.

Van der Helst was one of the leading portrait painters in Amsterdam in the mid-seventeenth century, taking over from Rembrandt, whose style was becoming less fashionable. Van der Helst's smooth style with invisible brushstrokes became more popular than Rembrandt's increasingly free brushstrokes and use of impasto (raised ridges of paint that catch the light) to create glittering braid and beading. Van der Helst's delicate, detailed portrayal of the unknown girl's finery is so realistic it seems almost possible to hear the swish of her skirts and the tinkle of her long earrings.

Style: Baroque
Venus, goddess of love and beauty, twists to embrace her lover, Mars, god of war, who has thrown off his armour in his haste to reach her bed. Venus is above and on top of Mars, taking his head in her arm. Mars tumbles onto the bed as he meets her lips in the urgency of their desire.

A pair of doves, an attribute of Venus, are beside winged Cupid, who struggles to untie the laces of Mars' footwear. Venus is married to Vulcan. The voluminous red bed drapes are looped back around the bedposts to reveal this scene of adultery like a stage set. The earthiness of the deities' forbidden passion is echoed and expressed in the painting's sultry colour palette. The haste of the brushwork, without much detail, suggests that this painting was never intended to be displayed where it would be closely inspected -- perhaps high up, or in a bedroom over a door.

The erotic directness of the picture as well as its bawdy comedy are captured in a description of the painting from 1652 as 'A Venus whole body on a bed & Mars a fat red colord knave wch she pulls down & a cupid pulls off his buskins'. Palma's picture retains none of the elegance or poetic beauty of Titian's Venus and Adonis (Prado, Madrid) from which Venus' pose derives, but has its own direct, voluptuous appeal.

This painting is close in size, character, and connected in subject to Palma Giovane's Venus and Cupid at the Forge of Vulcan of about 1590 (Staatliche Museen, Kassel), which shows Venus from the front kissing Cupid, while Vulcan works in his forge in the background. There is a larger painting of Venus and Mars by Palma dated MDC (1600) in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. In 1619, the Italian poet Marino asked Palma to paint a picture of Mars leaving his armour in the care of a nymph as he turns to Venus, who waits for him, naked on her bed. He had given a large canvas of this subject to one of the Doria family and now wanted a smaller version on copper. The National Gallery's painting may be a little too early in date to have been the one given away by Marino, although the description seems to match.

What may be a preparatory study for the National Gallery’s painting or for another painting of Mars and Venus is in the British Museum's album of Palma Giovane's drawings. It is mounted on the same page as the preparatory drawing for the painting in Kassel, suggesting that Palma may have come up with the idea for both of them at the same time.

When Mars and Venus was presented to the National Gallery in 1838 its owner, Hugh Percy, the 3rd Duke of Northumberland, stated that it was not suitable for public exhibition, and so it hung for many years in the Director's office.

Style: High Renaissance
A nymph -- a mythological spirit of nature imagined as a young woman -- lies on a patch of grass in the foreground, blood streaming from wounds on her throat and hand. A satyr kneels next to her, mourning her death. A dog sits at her feet, balancing the stooping figure of the satyr and seemingly mourning as well. More dogs and a pelican appear at the lakeside in the background.

It has been suggested that this painting depicts an episode from the Metamorphoses (VII, 752--65), an influential poem by the ancient Roman writer Ovid. If this is the case, the beautiful nymph would be Procris, who was accidentally killed by her husband Cephalus. Believing that Cephalus was being unfaithful to her, Procris spied on him while he was hunting. Cephalus, hearing a rustle in the trees and thinking it was a wild boar, threw his spear, killing his wife. While Ovid’s work does not account for the satyr, it has been argued that the inclusion of this figure is due to a late fifteenth-century adaptation of the poem by Niccolò da Correggio. Although now little known, Niccolò was a celebrated author, his fame helped by the fact that he was also a courtier and military commander of noble birth.

Regardless of the subject, the painting probably served as the backboard of a bench or a chest, or as part of the panelling in a Florentine palace. The framing element drawn on the back may give a clue to its now-lost wooden surround. The Florentine painter Piero di Cosimo specialised in the production of paintings of such format, known as spalliere. His sixteenth-century biographer, Vasari, especially praised the ones he made for a member of the Vespucci, the same family for whom Sandro Botticelli may have painted his Venus and Mars. Unfortunately, we don't know for whom our painting was made, but it was once owned by a member of the Guicciardini, a distinguished Florentine family, which may suggest that it decorated a property of theirs.

Vasari also praised the artist’s great skill in depicting nature and animals, skills that are evident in our painting. There is a real sensitivity in the depiction of a dog mourning its beloved mistress -- underdrawing revealed through technical examination shows that Piero carefully adjusted the animal's position -- and the flowers on either side seem almost to be bending in empathy with the figures next to them.

Style: Early Renaissance
Saint Peter and Saint Dorothy look at each other, the sweeping upward folds of their draperies creating a rhythm from the left to the right of the picture. They mirror each other in pose and gesture, and both appear ready to step off the ledge towards us, lending a sense of momentum to their figures.

Saint Peter clutches ​a Bible with a soft leather cover to his chest. In the same hand he holds two unwieldy keys -- those to the kingdom of heaven, promised to him by Christ. In the spindly fingers of his left hand he gingerly clasps a pair of glasses to help him to read. The minute reflection of a latticed window pane is visible in the lenses. Dorothy holds only a tiny delicate flower to her breast, plucked presumably from the basket of blooms in her left hand. The flowers are a reference to a miracle told in her legend which describes how, at her martyrdom, Christ came to deliver a basket of flowers from heaven to an unbelieving onlooker.

The artist has taken great care to imitate a range of textures faithfully, giving the impression that the saints really are standing before us. The highly polished marble column behind contrasts with the texture of the decorative textile hanging, its gold thread catching the light in its folds. The plants in the foreground are painted in great detail, while the hills and trees in the background have a hazy quality that emphasises their distance.

The panel may have formed part of the left-hand shutter of an altarpiece. It is a pair to another panel now in the Mainz State Museum which shows Saints Andrew and Columba standing against an almost identical backdrop of a fabric hanging and marble column in front of a landscape. The Mainz panel would have been the right-hand shutter. The central panel has not yet been traced. Both shutter panels have been painted on the reverse with a scene of the Adoration of the Kings, added some time after the fronts were completed.

Style: High Renaissance
Despite the poor condition of this picture -- there is a broad network of cracks running across the entire paint surface -- it is still possible to read its details. The Latin inscription identifies the woman as Costanza de' Medici , the wife of an important Florentine citizen of the Caetani family. This was clearly made to celebrate their marriage: she holds a sprig of orange blossom, which was associated with chastity and was traditionally worn by brides and wives.

The jewellery on the ledge may have been part of the 'counter-dowry', the gifts given by the groom. There is a ruby necklace finished off with three pearls, symbols of purity. The three rings on a bolster -- one topped with a single pearl -- also refer to marriage. The gold pins and the needle are an expression of her domestic skills. Records show that Costanza de Medici was born in about 1469 and was married by 1489; the picture was probably made around this time. She wears a gamurra, a square-necked dress, with a laced bodice and sleeves, covered by a coverciere, a silk shoulder covering which came into use after 1464 as part of a law regulating dress codes. The white cap was worn only by married women.

Two windows on either side of Constanza's head give a view onto hills studded with mature trees; you can just make out mountains in the distance. The custom of setting portraits against a landscape background derived from Netherlandish portraiture and by the late fifteenth century it had become commonplace in Italy.

The style of dress seen here, fashionable in the 1480s and 1490s, is also found in Portrait of a Girl, which was made in made in the workshop of the Florentine artist Domenico Ghirlandaio. The painting belongs to a group of portraits which are close in style to those produced by Ghirlandaio and his workshop, but the individual artist cannot be identified. Some of these paintings include the sitter's hands and a landscape, while others, like Portrait of a Girl, do not include the hands and have a plain dark background. This work has in the past been attributed to the young Fra Bartolommeo, when he was much influenced by Domenico Ghirlandaio.

Style: Early Renaissance
This portrait was bequeathed to the National Gallery in 1837. Time hasn't been kind to it. Painted in oil on an oak panel, the background in particular seems to have suffered damage or been painted over at some point.

We don't know who the sitter is or who painted the picture, but is thought perhaps to be a copy of a portrait by an Amsterdam artist of about 1640. The man's costume and hairstyle -- the lace falling collar, long curls, moustache and tuft of beard beneath his chin -- were in fashion at about this time. His fleshy face and direct gaze also suggest he is a man of some standing in his community.

Style: Baroque
The Gospel of Luke tells how after Christ’s crucifixion, on the evening of his resurrection, Cleopas and another of Christ’s disciples set out from Jerusalem for the village of Emmaus. They were discussing the news that Christ’s tomb had been discovered empty and were full of sorrow. They were joined on the road by a stranger who rebuked them for their lack of faith and explained the prophecies concerning the Messiah's death and resurrection. It was not until the three ate together later at an inn in Emmaus that the disciples recognised the risen Christ (Luke 24: 13--29). He then vanished and the disciples hurried back to Jerusalem to relay the news of Christ's resurrection to his other disciples.

Lelio Orsi sets the episode on an overcast evening – bursts of light break through black clouds, casting a supernatural glow over the three figures walking along the road to Emmaus. Christ and the disciples are dressed in the broad-brimmed hats and simple costume of peasants, probably derived from northern European prints. The disciple on the left carries a yellow pack slung from the staff over his shoulder and a water flask. The other two travellers also carry pilgrims' staffs with spiked metal tips. The prominent daggers at their belts express something of the dangers that beset contemporary pilgrims on their journeys to the Holy Land.

The two disciples turn to the mysterious stranger in the centre as he explains the prophecy of the Messiah’s resurrection. The stranger -- who is Christ himself -- turns his open palm upward as he offers his explanation. The disciple on the left wrings his hands, while the one on the right clutches his belt. They don't recognise the man as Christ, but the artist identifies him for us by his brightly lit white robe. The small goldfinch in the bottom right-hand corner is another clue to the stranger's identity as it is a common symbol of the Passion. Legend has it that the distinctive red markings on the goldfinch's head were caused by drops of Christ’s blood when the bird withdrew a thorn from his forehead during the Crucifixion.

The complex, brightly lit folds of the drapery continue the swirling movement of the clouds in the sky and heighten the drama of the scene. The fabric clings to and reveals the muscular limbs of the massive bodies beneath. The painting, which shows Orsi's interest in the work of Michelangelo, dates from after Orsi's trip to Rome, and probably to about 1565--75. Christ and the figure on the left are very similar in pose and physical type to figures on the right of Michelangelo’s Crucifixion of Saint Peter (Capella Paolina, Vatican) and almost certainly derive from them.

As Christ recounts the prophecies of his resurrection to his two disciples, hope begins to dawn on them like the bright light breaking through the overcast sky above. Preparatory drawings for this painting survive in the Louvre, Paris; Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford; and a private collection in Sacramento, California. To have made so many versions of the same drawing is quite rare in sixteenth-century Italian art -- during his lifetime Orsi was particularly celebrated for his skill in drawing.

Style: High Renaissance
If you were to visit the market square of Haarlem today, you would find a view that is not much different to the one in Gerrit Berckheyde's 1674 painting. We are about to step onto a marketplace where a crowd of townspeople are going about their day-to-day business. A lavishly dressed couple walking their dog on the left side of the painting stand out.

On the right is a colonnaded structure with a balustrade, identified as part of the city’s town hall. It casts a prominent shadow in the foreground of the painting, and forms an ideal vantage point for the towering church beyond. The stepped gables of the smaller brick buildings that surround the square are typical of seventeenth-century Dutch architecture. The tallest gable on the square’s shadowy side belongs to the meat market, a mercantile centre that still exists today, celebrated as one of the Netherlands’ most important late Renaissance buildings. Being the son of a butcher, the artist might have had a personal attachment to this place. The stalls surrounding the church belong to the town’s fish market, and are no longer there.

Gerrit was one of the leading townscape painters of his time, together with his older brother Job. Like their more famous contemporary Jacob van Ruisdael, the brothers loved painting their native Haarlem. This picture is one of many that depicts the town’s Grote Kerk, a late Gothic church dedicated to Saint Bavo (a seventh-century saint from nearby Brabant, venerated as Haarlem’s patron saint). The Market Place and Town Hall, Haarlem, another picture by Berckheyde, is on long-term loan to the National Gallery from the Victoria and Albert Museum -- it shows the marketplace from the other side, looking from the church towards the town hall.

Taken together, this picture’s three prominent buildings -- church, town hall and meat market -- represent the city’s religious, political and commercial functions. The people gathered on the square literally live their lives between these institutions, adding some subtle symbolism: this townscape is testament to civic pride.

Gerrit signed and dated the picture on the corner column of the town hall portico, 'Gerrit Berck Heyde/1674', inscribing himself on his native city. You can imagine the man attentively reading the announcement card on that same column next discovering the painter’s signature.

Style: Baroque
This simple, direct portrait shows the artist’s mother, Anna Westerbaen. The features of the woman resemble her likeness in other paintings (see for example the posthumous double portrait with her husband in the National Gallery of Art, Washington) and her age – 52 in 1657 – conforms precisely with the painting’s inscription.

The daughter of a rope maker from The Hague, Anna Westerbaen was the sister of the physician and poet Jacob Westerbaen and the portrait painter Jan Westerbaen. She married the painter, architect and poet Salomon de Bray in 1625 in The Hague and later moved to Haarlem, where she gave birth to at least ten children.

Anna’s eldest son Jan depicted his mother a number of times in his paintings, but this is the only formal portrait. It possibly once had a pendant showing her husband Salomon. The portrait of her husband is now lost, but a drawing by Jan (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett), bearing the same date of 1657 and similar inscription stating the sitter’s age, seems to record the companion piece.

The panel may have been cut on the left, and the initials preceding the surname of the signature consequently lost. X-ray photographs show that the head was originally further to the left and that the collar was lower.

Style: Baroque
This altarpiece originally came from the high altar of the Franciscan church of S. Guglielmo, Ferrara. Appropriately, most of the saints are Franciscans: Saint Francis, the founder of the Order, Saint Clare, and Saint Anthony of Padua. The church belonged to nuns of that Order. There is documentary evidence for dating the altarpiece to 1517-18.

 There is documentary evidence for dating the altarpiece to 1517-18: Garofalo received his payment of 60 lire, and a bonus of 18 lire from Antonio de' Costabili for having done the job so well.

Style: High Renaissance