wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
In 1750 Giovanni Battista Tiepolo travelled to Würzburg in Germany, together with his sons Lorenzo and Domenico, to paint a series of frescoes in the Residenz, the archbishop's palace. This painting is a small oil sketch after one of those scenes, probably made by his son Domenico.

It shows Frederick Barbarossa, Holy Roman Emperor from 1155 to 1190, getting married to Beatrice of Burgundy. This painting doesn't reflect twelfth-century fashions, however -- the setting and costumes are of a sixteenth-century style, and the figure of the emperor is based on Prince-Bishop Karl Philipp von Greiffenklau, who commissioned the fresco. Most of the surrounding figures gaze towards the bishop who conducts the ceremony, but not everyone is paying attention. A man on the right and a boy to the left look out of the picture, while a court jester climbs the steps towards a barking dog.

The series of fresco paintings formed part a spectacular scheme of interior decoration which aimed to show both the historical importance of the Emperor Frederick and the contemporary importance of the prince-bishops of Würzburg. The work remains part of the Kaisersaal, the imperial hall where plasterwork, fresco, mirrors and gilding combine to create an astonishing effect. The basic composition of Domenico's painting is like that of the fresco, although the placement of some of the foreground figures is different. Unlike the regular oblong shape of the painting, the fresco is asymmetrical, and is seen as if revealed by a massive curtain made of stucco and gold leaf.

In both the sketch and finished fresco, the setting -- with its arches, columns and viewing platform in the background -- is highly fanciful but suitably grand. Battista was inventive in his use of space: the altar is viewed at a sharp angle and the foreground steps and the loggia in the background are brightly lit. In the sketch, the foreground figures are painted in rich colours -- saturated reds, blue and gold -- and the paint is thickly applied, while the colours in the fresco are paler and more monochrome, and the paint is thin and fluid. Further differences, like the throne carved with acanthus leaves at the bottom right and the dramatic fluttering drapery in the upper part, suggest that Domenico enjoyed making little variations to his father's fresco.

Style: Rococo, Neoclassical
There is a swagger, even an arrogance, in the bearing of this man who meets our eye so directly and seems so at ease with himself. This is an undated self portrait, and going by what his contemporaries said about the artist -- Jan Lievens --  we shouldn’t be surprised at his self-confident air. In the 1650s, when he was painting a portrait of Sir Robert Kerr, the English ambassador, Kerr wrote a letter describing him: 'he thinks there is none to be compared with him in all Germany, Holland, nor the rest of the 17 Provinces [of the Low Countries].'

Lievens' confidence isn’t just apparent in his bearing. His dress is that of a man of wealth and fashion. The padded silk gown (known as a japonse rock) was expensive and probably imported from Japan. The gown and billowing shirt, sleeves tied back with wide black ribbons, first came into fashion in the early to mid-1650s, which was also the time that gentlemen started to wear their hair long and loose, as Lievens does here. That date also fits with the style adopted by Lievens for the landscape in the background.

This portrait in particular reflects how Lievens’ style, once close to that of Rembrandt, had changed after he was exposed to other influences. From 1635 to 1643 he worked with Flemish artists in Antwerp. And before that, in the early 1630s, he was in London, painting at the court of Charles I, where he met Anthony van Dyck. In fact we know that this is a self portrait in part because the face and features closely resemble a painting Van Dyck made of him in London about 1632 (now lost, but known through an engraving after it).

His chosen dress is interesting in this context. In the seventeenth century self portraits were a way for artists to demonstrate their skills to potential clients, but they were also a way of claiming higher social and artistic status. Rembrandt tended to do this by posing in antique-style clothes, aligning himself with the great Italian painters of a century and more earlier. But Lievens' experience working with the dashing Van Dyck at the English court made him far more interested in emulating the aristocracy's latest fashions, and also providing them with a more impressive setting than, for example, the shadowy brown background favoured by Rembrandt. The landscape behind Lievens -- which unusually appears to be a moonlit rather than a day-time scene -- includes a long avenue suggesting the formal grounds of a country estate. The aristocracy were, after all, among his most important customers, and he needed to be able to paint them in a suitable style. But the confidence of his pose suggests that he may have considered himself their social equal too.

Style: Baroque
This is one of four paintings made to decorate a pair of shutters. Each of the shutters was painted with a saint on the outside and an angel on the inside. The central image they would once have flanked and protected is now missing, but it is likely to have represented the Virgin Mary crowned in the heavens. We know this from the inscription included on the parapet beneath the angels, which translates from Latin as: 'Hail Queen of the Heavens.'

This panel of Saint Jerome is the most damaged of the four paintings and has been extensively restored. Saint Jerome was a fourth-century priest, theologian and historian who lived in Rome, Gaul and Asia Minor. He is known for translating most of the Bible from Greek into Latin, known as the Vulgate. He also translated the Old Testament from Hebrew into Latin and wrote commentaries on the Gospels.

Here Saint Jerome is depicted as one of the four Latin Doctors of the Church. His red habit and hat resemble those of a cardinal, which is anachronistic as cardinals did not exist during Jerome's lifetime. Sometimes he is shown in the wilderness or accompanied by a lion, refering to the period he spent as a hermit in the Syrian desert.

Here Saint Jerome holds the Bible in his right hand and turns the pages with the gloved fingers of his left. It is more usual to hold a book in the left hand and turn the pages with the right (assuming you are right-handed). It is likely that the figure of Jerome was painted by Moretto in reverse from a pose he invented for a polyptych for S. Maria degli Angeli at Gardone Valtrompia (now in the Brera, Milan). The figures seem to be the same size, so it is possible that the same cartoon was used, and the figure was reversed so as to face left on the right-hand shutter.

Style: High Renaissance
Both the bridge and our position in relation to it are very similar to an oil painting by Jacob Maris’s brother, Matthijs Maris, titled The Nieuwe Haarlemse Sluis on the Singel (also known as Souvenir d’Amsterdam) (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam). Painted in 1871 while he was living in Paris, Matthijs’s picture was based upon a photograph he had bought in Amsterdam in 1860 that shows the Haarlem sluice on the Singel canal where it flows into Amsterdam’s waterfront. Matthjis Maris was not especially interested in his painting's topographical accuracy and later conceded that he had invented some of the houses in the background.

It is the everyday quality of this simple functional structure that may have appealed to Jabob Maris, and he paints it without embellishment or narrative incident. He also made a watercolour, dated 1875, of the same view (Rijksmuseum), but in the oil painting he emphasises the monumentality of the bridge by increasing the distance between it and the row of houses on the right. As his brother Matthijs had done in his painting of the bridge, Jacob may well have changed the surrounding buildings -- for example, by substantially reducing their height, perhaps to allow the bridge to stand out against the sky -- and he also simplified the foreground. He replaced the watercolour's single figure on the bridge with a horse and cart and slightly heightened the contrast between light and dark. As in the watercolour, Maris uses black outlines for the bridge itself. These appear to have been painted directly wet-in-wet without any preparatory underdrawing, although Maris may have used a ruler or perspective frame.

The painting makes an interesting comparison with Christen Købke’s more atmospheric The Northern Drawbridge to the Citadel in Copenhagen painted some 40 years earlier and with Van Gogh’s paintings and drawings of the Langlois Bridge in Arles. Van Gogh was in part attracted to the drawbridge over a canal, which he painted several times in oil in 1888, because it reminded him of his Dutch homeland. Indeed, it is possible that he may have even seen this painting. In a letter to his brother Theo, dated 6 April 1875,  he mentions a picture by Jacob Maris exhibited at the 1874 Salon which is 'almost the same' as Matthijs’s painting of the drawbridge, which he had probably seen in London the previous year. Like the Maris brothers, Van Gogh was careful to show the structure of the bridge accurately, using a perspective frame that he had built while in The Hague in order to draw it correctly.

Style: Realist
In this small painting, the Virgin Mary sits on an enormous and elaborately decorated throne in front of a distant landscape. The idea of raising the Virgin and Child on a vast, ornate structure was doubtless a very ancient one, but it was perhaps popularised in the Low Countries by Quinten Massys, as in The Virgin and Child Enthroned, with Four Angels. Here, the Christ Child seems to be trying to leap off his mother's knee. His outstretched arms recall the Crucifixion, as do the cross and whip he holds: before being crucified, Christ was beaten by Roman soldiers.

Infrared reflectograms reveal a lot of underdrawing and many changes. In the first version of the picture, the throne and canopy were smaller but more intricately decorated. They were perhaps initially the work of a specialist painter. Jan van Coninxloo seems to have altered them considerably, adding figures of the Virgin and Child inspired by Jean Gossart's The Virgin and Child.

The picture has an integral frame -- panel and frame are carved from a single piece of oak -- and in one place the Virgin's dress is painted to overlap onto the frame's surface. Many Renaissance paintings were part of multi-panelled altarpieces but this seems to have been intended as a single panel (there are no obvious traces of hinges). There are various holes in the top of the frame for hanging attachments, though these might have been made later; most small paintings weren't made to hang on walls at this time. The back is not finished with particular care and has no trace of a ground.

Style: High Renaissance
Views of the river Seine in Paris, with its many quays and bridges, were a favourite subject for Stanislas-Victor-Edmond Lépine and form a substantial part of his work. He was especially drawn to the Pont de la Tournelle, whose backdrop included wide views of the river and some of the city’s oldest areas. Made of stone, the bridge connected the left bank of the river (at the quai Saint-Bernard) to the Ile Saint-Louis. ‘Tournelle’ refers to a square turret (tournelle) built at the end of the twelfth century. The arched bridge we see here was constructed in 1654, but was replaced in 1928 by the bridge that exists today.

In this painting, we are looking west -- perhaps from the Pont de Sully or from what is now the Square Barye on the easterly tip of the Ile Saint-Louis -- across the full span of the bridge. The two towers, spire and apse of Notre-Dame Cathedral on the Ile de la Cité are just to the right. The tower in front of the Pont de la Tournelle is what remained of another bridge, the Pont de Constantine.

On the horizon, just left of centre, you can see a tall structure. This is probably the Eiffel Tower, which had only recently been built for the 1889 World’s Fair. Its presence dates the picture to the final years of Lépine's life (he died in 1892), almost 30 years later than it was previously believed to have been painted. The Eiffel Tower's height made it a distinctive landmark, but Lépine typically avoided views of modern Paris, such as the wide boulevards that had been built by Baron Hausmann between 1853 and 1870. These new boulevards, together with scenes of crowds and leisure, particularly appealed to the Impressionists-- as can be seen, for example, in Pissarro’s The Boulevard Montmartre at Night. Lépine, however, focused on areas and activities that were beginning to disappear and which lacked the visual excitement of contemporary life.

Lépine sometimes worked on location, but large paintings were painted in his studio. These are also more detailed and have a smoother finish than this one. Although signed, this small picture is probably a sketch painted on site. Lépine limited the colours to shades of yellow, grey, brown and blue, with small highlights of white and red, as he has recorded the principal architectural features. Little is known about Lépine's early training and he appears to be largely self taught. However, as a young man he spent some time studying with Corot. The emphasis in this sketch on atmosphere and muted tonal harmonies suggests Corot's lasting influence.

Lépine is a transitional figure who occupies a place between the Barbizon School and Impressionism. He participated in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874, but not in later exhibitions by the group.

Style: Impressionist
Whatever the purpose of this picture, the subject -- a shabby man clutching an ale mug and pipe, his eyes cast to the ceiling as if searching in vain for a thought -- is meant to be an object of ridicule. It has been suggested that the image might be a vanitas, an allegory of the fleeting nature of life, gone like a puff of smoke from a pipe. Another possibility is that it's a tronie ('face'), a painting of a stock character often with an exaggerated facial expression.

Diepraem made a speciality of such pictures, either single tronie portraits or groups of peasants partying in an inn, with the same outlandish expressions -- and often with a similar blue and grey jug somewhere in the scene, containing Rhenish wine.

Style: Baroque
Adam, wearing an apron of leaves, and Eve, still naked, stand between the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life. Adam has just tasted the apple that Eve holds, while the serpent watches from above. In the background is the Garden of Eden with the richly decorated Fountain of Life in the centre.This is one of at least nine painted or drawn compositions of this subject undertaken by the artist; they became progressively more complicated. Gossaert was especially interested in portraying the nude figure; this painting shows the influence of Italian and German art.This painting is on loan from His Majesty The King

Style: High Renaissance
Floris van Dijck was one of the most important pioneers of so-called ‘display piece’ still lifes. His works are very rare but were highly influential. Almost all his compositions centre on a stack of cheeses on a plate seen from a high viewpoint so that the various elements of the composition are seen to their best advantage. Here, they are surrounded by grapes and various fruits in blue and white Wanli earthenware Chinese export porcelain bowls, two drinking glasses, nuts and further fruits scattered on the table, and a piece of bread and a sliced apple and its peel on a pewter plate precariously placed on the edge of a table covered with a red damask cloth and white lace. The elevated viewpoint is similar to early landscapes which also tend to adopt a bird’s-eye perspective. Many later Dutch still lifes take their cue from works such as this, even if their viewpoint gradually becomes lower and the colours more subdued.

Style: Baroque
These two pairs of saints were originally the side panels for an altarpiece painted by Antonio Vivarini in collaboration with his brother-in-law Giovanni d'Alemagna, whose name suggests he originally came from Germany. The Vivarinis ran a successful family workshop in Venice in the second half of the fifteenth and early sixteenth century; Bartolomeo and  Alvise Vivarini were also members. Their painting had a great influence on the work of Carlo Crivelli.

The saints are identified by inscriptions and by their attributes -- they are Saints Peter, Jerome, Francis and Mark. The central panel, showing the Virgin and Child enthroned, is now in the Museo di San Tommaso Becket Martire in Padua, although the altarpiece was made for the church of San Moisè in Venice. The saints are shown standing on a pedestal, a detail common in sculpture but  in Venetian painting used only by the Vivarinis.

Although the altar was a triptych with panels set in a gilded frame, the ornately shaped stone pedestal would have run along all three panels, and the balustrade behind them connected with the Virgin's throne, so that the figures seem to exist in the same space. The flowering hedge behind them also ran behind the Virgin, and is an allusion to the widespread medieval idea of the Virgin as a hortus conclusus, an 'enclosed garden', a metaphor for her chastity. The white and red roses were also symbols of the Virgin, who was often referred to as 'the rose without a thorn'.

The style and setting of the holy figures is very close to that in an altarpiece signed by Antonio and Giovanni in 1446 (now in the Galleria dell'Accademia, Venice), and this altarpiece was probably painted around the same time. The altarpiece was still in the church of San Moisè  in 1644 but was presumably dismantled when the church was rebuilt later in the century.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
Venice: The Punta della Dogana and Venice: The Guidecca with the Zitelle were painted as a pair and intended to be hung together. They show views of where the Venetian Lagoon meets the mouth of the Grand Canal on the east side of Venice (the island of Guidecca is even visible on the far left of The Punta della Dogana).  In both paintings, Guardi used a soft, light touch and cool lighting to depict the buildings, summery sky and transparent water.

The small scale of these works, which are slightly smaller that an A4 piece of paper, would have made them easy to carry and transport. This may tell us about who bought such pictures, most likely tourists on their journey around Europe.

Style: Neoclassical
This portrait diptych shows father and son, future electors of Saxony Johann the Steadfast (1468--1532) and Johann Friedrich the Magnanimous (1503--1554). The format was traditionally used to show a husband and wife, with the man depicted on the left and the woman on the right. Johann’s wife, Sophie of Mecklenburg, died in childbirth, and so Cranach instead portrayed father and son in this pendant format.

This portrait was made to assert the power of the electors of Saxony and to emphasise their hereditary lineage, confirming their dynastic right to rule. Cranach was first employed as a court painter in 1504. He worked for successive electors, and his workshop continued to be employed even after his death in 1553.

The portraits have complementary colour schemes: the green of the background in the father’s portrait is echoed by the green of his son’s clothing, while the black background in the son’s portrait matches the black of the father’s clothing. But Johann Friedrich dominates the composition in a way that Johann the Steadfast does not; Cranach has manipulated the scale of the portraits by placing the child higher up and closer to the viewer. He is still angelic and childlike, but has a commanding physical presence.

The frame is original: paint has been detected on the inner edges of the frame, which suggests that the paintings were made after the wooden panels had been fitted into it. This is known as an engaged frame.

Style: High Renaissance
Winged Father Time unveils Truth, who is dressed in white and rests her foot on a globe, symbolising the Earth from which she has sprung. With her left hand, Truth unmasks Deceit, while with her right she gestures to the four cardinal virtues: Prudence, holding a snake; Temperance, carrying a water jug; Justice, with sword and scales; and Fortitude, who rests her elbow on a courageous lion. Deceit’s second mask -- a sign of her two-faced nature -- lies beside her.

Jean-François de Troy has juxtaposed Truth’s white drapery and bare feet with Deceit’s dark blue drapery and leather slippers, contrasting Truth’s purity with Deceit’s dark nature. The idea of Truth springing from the Earth is also found in Psalm 85: 11: ‘Truth shall spring out of the Earth.’ Truth was also believed to be more powerful than all earthly things, and to be above the baseness of the world.

The monumental figures occupy the foreground of a landscape like actors on a stage set. They are organised in a balanced pyramidal arrangement with Time and Truth positioned at the top, perhaps to indicate that they will triumph. While all the figures look at Truth, she looks at us, drawing us into the image and guiding us around it by the interplay of glances and hand gestures. The inclusion of the domed temple on the right, which also appears in de Troy’s The Virgin Mary and Souls in Purgatory of 1710 (San Donato, Genoa), may be intended to suggest the classical origins of the subject.

The classical motto, ‘Truth is the daughter of Time’, means that truth becomes apparent through the passage of Time. The idea was depicted in two books which explained how to represent symbolic subjects: Alciati’s Emblemata of 1531 and Ripa’s Iconologia of 1593. In France, the theme appeared during the seventeenth century and continued to be depicted into the eighteenth century. De Troy must have known of Poussin's version of the subject, painted in 1641 for Cardinal Richelieu's ‘Grand Cabinet’ in the Palais Cardinal, Paris, in which Time rescues Truth from Anger and Evil. The pose of de Troy’s Truth is derived from the figure of Truth in Gian Lorenzo Bernini's unfinished sculpture Time and Truth of about 1645--7, which de Troy probably saw during his stay in Italy between 1699 and 1706, or otherwise knew from an engraving published in Paris in 1707.

De Troy was praised for the accuracy with which he painted everything from nature. We see his sound understanding of human anatomy in the figure of Time, although he seems to have had a little difficulty with the legs, which appear detached from the rest of the body. Technical examination reveals that de Troy made some changes to the composition during painting: the head of the snake was originally painted turned inwards to face Prudence holding it, and the architecture was slightly higher and further to the left. The globe may originally have been placed just to the right of Fortitude’s outstretched arm.

We do not know who commissioned the painting, although it is signed and dated on the globe. There is a painted copy by Sebastian Staessens of 1794 (Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow).

Style: Baroque, Rococo