wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
A woman drinks from a large goblet; she looks up with resolve in her eyes, as though she has just made a noble toast. We don't know exactly who she is, but it's likely she is the ill-fated but brave Carthaginian princess, Sophonisba, whose turbulent life and tragic death were recorded by several Roman writers including the historian Livy. Many centuries later, her story inspired the fourteenth-century Italian poet Petrarch to celebrate her in his Triumph of Love, as well as his poem about the Second Punic War (entitled simply, Africa).

The goblet contains poison sent to Sophonisba by her new husband, Massinia, the ruler of eastern Numidia. In 206 BC Massinia allied with the Roman general Scipio to defeat the western Numidians, ruled by Sophonisba's first husband, Syphax. But Massinia fell in love with Sophonisba the moment they met; she was, according to Petrarch, very fair, with golden hair and a complexion like lilies and roses. Massinia married her but could not dissuade Scipio from his plan to parade her in Rome as a victory trophy. In order to spare her this humiliation he sent her poison, which we see her drink here.

Other than the goblet, the only clue to her identity is her costume: Mantegna has conveyed her exoticism through her clothes and accessories, which include a headdress with a turban covered by a loose veil and a pleated neck covering. The outfit is finished off with a dangling pearl earring. The context in which she was originally displayed would also have helped: it is very likely that this panel was painted as a pair to Mantegna's image of the Vestal Virgin Tuccia. Both are painted in imitation of gilded bronze against a pink and white background painted to look like marble. This panel seems to have been cut down at the long edges and so was probably made with the same dimensions as the panel showing Tuccia. Both may have been made as part of the decoration of the studiolo (study) of Mantegna's patron Isabella d'Este.

Mantegna has emphasised the rigidity of the figure by painting it as though lit by a strong light coming from the left. This allowed him to make utmost use of the limited colours by painting the areas hit by this imaginary light -- the tips of the folds of the drapery, for example -- as bright and gleaming, and the creases, which are in shadow, much darker. The sharp contrasts increase the illusion that the figure is in fact sculpted -- actual fabric would not fold in such a stiff way. Mantegna is showing off here: his skill was so great that he could use paint alone to create a figure that looks as hard and solid as a bronze relief.

Style: Early Renaissance
Anne 2nd Countess of Albemarle was born Lady Anne Lennox on 24 June 1703. She was the younger daughter of Charles Lennox, 1st Duke of Richmond (1672--1723), who was himself the illegitimate son of King Charles II and Louise de Keroualle.

On 21 February 1722, she married William-Anne Keppel, 2nd Earl of Albemarle, who was a courtier, Colonel of the Coldstream Guards, Knight of the Garter and Groom of the Stole. She became a Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Caroline and a favourite of George II, and in 1743 escorted their youngest daughter, Princess Louisa, to Denmark to be married. Anne's husband, the Earl, was famously extravagant, squandering his own fortune of £90,000 as well as his wife's dowry of £25,000. They had 15 children, but only four sons and two daughters survived childhood. Albemarle was appointed ambassador to Paris, where he died on 22 December 1754. George II awarded Lady Albemarle a pension of £1,200 a year and she lived for a further 35 years.

Lady Albemarle is approaching 60 in this portrait, and the swirling rococo design of her dress would have been slightly old-fashioned by the end of the 1750s. She holds a shuttle and is engaged in 'knotting' -- a pastime involving making knots in thread which could then be sewn as decoration onto other items. A pair of scissors and a workbasket lie on the table beside her. Knotting required less skill than embroidery but gave the impression of a useful activity. However, not a single knot is visible in Lady Albemarle's thread.

She was a robust woman, who managed to scare off her muggers in 1750, when nine men ambushed and robbed her in London. By 1786 she had outlived all of her children. She died in 1789 at the age of 86. Her face in Reynolds's portrait is almost dead-white as the paint has faded. The red lake pigment has been bleached from the flesh paint by the light. Other areas, such as the edge of the chair back, have also faded.

This portrait was probably commissioned by her eldest son, George 3rd Earl of Albemarle, but the idea that Lady Albemarle should be painted by Reynolds almost certainly came from her second son, Augustus Keppel, a Commodore in the Royal Navy. Reynolds portrayed Keppel at least seven times, and his second dynamic full-length portrait of the Commodore (National Maritime Museum, Greenwich) made his name as a portraitist. During Reynolds's long friendship with Keppel, he also painted 13 portraits of other members of the family.

Lady Albemarle sat for Reynolds 11 times between 26 September 1757 and 28 June 1759 and the portrait was finished by 1760, although Reynolds was not paid for it for a further 12 years.

Style: Academic, Neoclassical, Georgian
This is the central panel of a two-tier altarpiece, painted between about 1456 and 1461 by Giorgio Schiavone for the funerary chapel of the wealthy Roberti family in the church of San Nicolò in Padua. It shows the Virgin Mary siting on a grand throne, a chubby Christ Child balancing precariously on her knee. Her wavy blonde hair is just visible underneath her white headdress. Christ wears a coral necklace, which likely functioned as both a teether and talisman. His left foot leans on a glass ball, in which four windows are reflected – an allusion to the orb the adult Christ is sometimes shown holding (like Salvator Mundi), which represents the world.

The illusory label attached to the base of the Virgin’s throne in the centre panel identifies the altarpiece as the work of Giorgio Schiavone, a disciple of Francesco Squarcione. The artist has painted the parchment to make it look as if it has been folded up and is creased and wrinkled. Next to the label on the step is a fly; a detail also used by Carlo Crivelli.

This panel demonstrates Schiavone’s familiarity with the work of his contemporaries. Many aspects of the artist’s style are derived from Squarcione: the garlands with ribbons, the outsized fruit, the putti and the slightly pop-eyed child with bulging cheeks with one leg facing to the front and one to the side. The carved reliefs on the throne show the influence of the painter Andrea Mantegna, who was very interested in the sculpture of classical antiquity. Like Schiavone, Mantegna worked in Squarcione's workshop.

Schiavone was influenced by the paintings of Carlo Crivelli. Like Crivelli, Schiavone was interested in creating an illusion of three-dimensional space through light and shade and through experimentation with linear perspective. The leaves of the two large pomegranates on top of the throne curl forward over the marble edge, casting shadows on it. The receding sides of the throne’s plinth make it seem to project forward, and the Virgin’s pink dress tumbles in crumpled folds over the front step.

The panel seems to have been cut down at the top and may well have had an elaborate Gothic frame. The swag of leaves and fruit above the Virgin’s head now seems suspended in mid-air. When covered by its original arched frame (now lost), however, it would have appeared to hang as if slung from the top corners of the frame

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
Nowadays, many of us have little experience of clear moonlight -- it's often washed out by street lights or car headlamps. But in the seventeenth century the many moods and lighting effects of the night sky and the different phases and heights of the moon would have been a familiar part of everyday life. It was only in 1670, about 25 years after this picture was painted, that Amsterdam became the first city in Europe to install a system of street lighting, invented by the painter Jan van der Heyden.

Van der Neer, who lived in Amsterdam, specialised in capturing landscapes in moonlight and at dawn and dusk. This is a typical example of his work -- a similar scene to A River near a Town, by Moonlight, also in the National Gallery's collection. It probably doesn't depict a 'real' place, but one composed by the artist so that he could highlight the reflections of the light on the mirror-still water, and the carefully arranged silhouettes of the church, the windmill and the boats lying off the quayside.

Style: Baroque
A woman, her face intent, leans towards an old man -- a cobbler. She pokes her finger vigorously into a worn shoe; its pair lies on the ground at her feet. He takes the event in his stride with a little smile, holding on to the shoe he's been working on while reaching for hers, with one of his tools still tucked into his hand. This little passage of painting is exquisite: the cobbler's skin is leathery and his nails dirty, but his hand is gentle, like his smile; the woman's hands are also work worn, but clean -- and tense. Jan Victors gives us accurate detail, like the leather strap used as a press for the cobbler's needle on one knee, the other bare above his tatty stocking. He shows us the delicate lace round the woman's cap and the light twinkling on her drop earring, and the twinkle in the ragged boy's eyes. All these small elements tell us about the characters the artist is creating, and help us build the stories the picture offers.

Is the woman anxious he should understand the repair she needs? Is she complaining about previous work he's done? Such questions are part of the purpose of these genre paintings -- pictures of peasant life, scenes that the owners would have found familiar, but with space left for their imaginations.

Some things they might have recognised at once. But the woman with the shoe is wearing the distinctive costume of West Frisia, a different part of the Dutch Republic from Amsterdam, where the artist lived. Has she married into an Amsterdam family, or has she been brought in as a maidservant? Many an urchin would have rolled barrels for a few coins like this one. The bird on the end of the barrel looks like a swan, probably the sign of the owner or the inn where it belongs. The lettering is the artist's signature. The bright eyes of the eager little dog look up at his master, but the boy's eyes are elsewhere. He's finding something funny, but again we're left wondering what that might be.

In the background a small crowd is gathered by the bridge. Under a round umbrella, a quack doctor sells medicine from a doubtful source to the gullible crowd. Each person there, however sketchily painted, has a character and invites a story: the doctor with the strange hat, black beard and moustache; the lonely, shy young girl behind him; the young man with the turned up nose and fluffy hat. At least one of the quack's patients has been badly served, judging by his pained expression as he hangs over the wall of the bridge.

Sadly, shortly after painting this, Jan Victors went to the Dutch East Indies as a siecketrooster (someone who comforts the sick). He disappeared and probably died there, looking after the humanity he had clearly treasured as an artist.

Style: Baroque
This small oil painting on paper mounted on canvas is attributed to Stanislas-Victor-Edmond Lépine, whose signature is faintly visible. The paper is torn along the edges and a darker underlayer suggests an earlier composition has been painted over.

A simple path in a park or woodland leads up a slight incline to an open gateway flanked by two posts and high stone walls. On the right, there is a house with a red tiled roof. Formerly titled Matinal (In The Morning or Early Morning), the picture is bathed in pale sunlight, its faintly yellow hue complementing the green tones of the foliage and undergrowth. The location may be Montmartre, an area in the north of Paris where many artists, including perhaps Lépine, lived and had their studios.

Lépine appears to have been self taught, but in his twenties he became a student of Corot. His use here of subtle tonal harmonies shows his teacher’s influence, but does not match Corot's quality of observation.

Style: Impressionist
This dramatic and busy scene includes glimpses of a vast landscape and an imagined architectural setting. This is unusual for a representation of the Crucifixion, which were not normally set against architecture -- but the scene is more than just this. It also shows the Trinity: God the Father, the massive figure shown here seated on a throne, supporting the arms of the Cross; the Holy Ghost, shown as a dove; and Jesus Christ, nailed to the Cross.

The surrounding figures were, according to the biblical accounts, present at the Crucifixion and usually appear in more conventional scenes which do not include the Trinity. Christ’s mother, Mary, and John the Evangelist stand on either side of the Cross; Mary Magdalene kneels clutching Christ’s feet. The Apostles Peter and James frame the back row. The kneeling male figures are Nicodemus, who carries a pair of pliers -- he removed the nails from Christ’s hands and feet -- and Joseph of Arimathea, who provided the tomb for Christ’s body.

Giovanni Mansueti was a Venetian painter who provided images for the headquarters of the city’s confraternities, known in Venice as scuole. The scuole required large series of religious paintings to decorate the walls and communicate specific theological messages.

The coloured and veined marbles in Mansueti's picture recall the largest and grandest church in Venice, the basilica of San Marco: its facade and interior were filled with coloured marbles. Two small cherubs stand within little curved balconies that look like pulpits (where sermons were preached), framing arches that open out onto a view of a broad landscape. These kind of miniature pulpits can be found in the Venetian church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli, which was completed only in 1493 and which Mansueti probably knew.

Although Mansueti used contemporary architectural details to create a setting that would have been familiar to his Venetian audience, it is only a screen within a landscape -- a total fantasy. This ambiguity might be intended to reflect the mystery of the subject, which could neither be represented within an interior nor a landscape setting.

Style: Early Renaissance
The infant Christ embraces the Virgin in a pose that very closely resembles -- and is probably based on the design for -- that in Raphael's so-called 'Mackintosh Madonna'. The picture may have been made by a member of Solario's workshop or it might be a copy of one of his works, made during his lifetime: it is of a lower quality than paintings by him. But the landscape background -- a broad valley leading to distant snowy mountains, which is here framed by a square stone opening -- is characteristic of Solario's work.

In the wooded part of the countryside to the right of the Virgin's head two men politely greet each other as their paths cross; one has been riding, the other walking, accompanied by his dog. Further down, near the bottom ledge, is a single white lily, a symbol of the Virgin's purity. Just behind Christ's head we see a shepherd playing his pipes as his flock grazes. The painting's original colours are obscured by a varnish which has turned yellow over time.

Style: High Renaissance
This is an early work by the Venetian painter Marco Basaiti. We do not know who this young man is but we can tell his age, origins and social rank from his costume.

Venetian men over the age of 25 were called 'togati', meaning that they were allowed to wear the toga, the outfit which defined their status. The two uppermost of the three classes, the aristocratic 'gentlemen' and the 'citizens', both wore long black floor-length gowns which fastened at the throat with a very small clasp, just visible here to the right. The picture must have been painted during the colder months because the gown is lined with fur, which you can see poking out of the opening at his chest. The hat, called a bareta, was also part of the regulation uniform. The young man's fair, bushy hair is in a style fashionable in Venice at the time, and creates a vibrant contrast to his sober black clothes.

Basaiti has placed the young man against a vast landscape, partly screened by a bright green cloth -- a backdrop often found in Venetian images of the Virgin and Child made for private worship in the home (as in Basaiti's own version and in those made by his fellow Venetian painter Giovanni Bellini and his workshop).

Basaiti's style was very close to that of Bellini. He has signed this work at the lower right corner on the marble effect ledge that separates us from the sitter. The 'P' stands for pinxit, meaning 'he painted it' in Latin. The device of the ledge was also favoured by Bellini (see for example his portrait of Doge Loredan). It gives the sense that the sitter is occupying a particular space, because he is behind an object that we can imagine reaching out to touch. Here, Basaiti has reinforced this illusion by painting his signature in grey on the ledge to look as though it is carved into the stone.

Style: Early Renaissance
This painting is a preliminary sketch for the central panel of an altarpiece Rubens made for St Bavo's Cathedral, Ghent. It depicts a scene described in a biography of Saint Bavo that appeared in 1583, written by the theologian Joannes Molanus.

Saint Bavo, formerly called Count Allowin of Haspengouw, was a Roman soldier who renounced his role in the military to become a monk. Here, he is shown being received by Saint Floribert, abbot of the monastery of Liège, who bends towards him, and Saint Amand, whose compelling sermon about the futility of material things convinced Saint Bavo to dedicate his life to God. Behind them, a cleric holds the black habit of a Benedictine monk, a replacement for Saint Bavo's armour. In the foreground, a man hands out the saint's riches to the poor, while two courtiers to the right appear to be looking on the scene with disgust. One of them even prods the beggars with his staff.

Rubens has depicted this hectic scene in bright, vivid colours, using short and rapid brushstrokes. The way that light reflects off the surface of Saint Bavo’s breastplate draws attention to him, and the gold robes of the clerics seem to glisten in the sunlight. The brightness causes the background figures to appear hazy -- Rubens has used a muted palette of pale grey and blue tones to paint them in grisaille. Saint Bavo’s red cape also helps him stand out against the crowd: its colour contrasts with the grisaille background figures, the dark grey and purple shades of the courtier’s doublet and the yellow, brown and grey tones worn by the other saints and monks.

The detailed features in the foreground and centre also contrast with the background figures, which are roughly sketched out as a mass of forms without individual characteristics. Rubens produced hundreds of oil sketches; some were used to plan out the composition and particular details of a painting, as seems to be the case with this one, while others were so detailed that they appeared to be finished paintings in their own right.

Some pentimenti can be seen using X-radiography and infrared reflectography. The face of the deacon who stands behind Saint Amand has been altered, and there may have been the head and hand of another beggar just to the left of the man who hands out Saint Bavo’s money. The positions of some of the children surrounding the mother in the foreground have also been changed.

Style: Baroque
Adriaen van Ostade specialised in painting dimly lit rooms, often belonging to an inn, peopled with 'low-life' characters, their features and poses grotesquely caricatured. The rooms usually have an air of poverty, with bare and smoke-stained walls. In some, battered furniture and broken crockery suggest the brawls that van Ostade also sometimes portrayed.

The room in this picture is drab, and the fallen broom and the litter suggest it's none too clean, but the characters in the foreground are more kindly treated. Although the fireplace is empty and the lighting dingy, the small group is quite homely and the relationship between them seems companionable. The woman hands the man in the low chair a glass of beer with a smile and, behind them, the man on the bench toasts them with a toothless grin, holding up his open tankard and his clay pipe.

The dim light from the glazed window makes soft shadows; these, and the dark earth colours, give the room warmth and intimacy. Van Ostade has made the hurdy-gurdy player of the title difficult to see, so we are more aware of the couple on the bench against the wall. Their faces are barely lit but their enjoyment of the music can still be seen. The musician leans forward, broad-brimmed hat over his eyes, giving us a bird's-eye-view of his hook nose and his grin, and of the cumbersome instrument under his arm. On the wall behind them is a print, a river scene unframed and tattered -- but still an effort to cheer up the room.

Van Ostade may have been a student of Frans Hals, together with the young Flemish painter Adriaen Brouwer, though their work shows little of Hals's influence. Rather, they went in their own direction, with Brouwer, the older of the two, perhaps helping to form van Ostade's style. They both delighted in robust -- and sometimes raunchy -- scenes of peasant life (see Brouwer's Tavern Scene or van Ostade's A Peasant Courting an Elderly Woman). These genre paintings were popular in seventeenth-century Holland, sometimes serving as a moral lesson in manners and lifestyle to middle-class families, but more often seen as a comical addition to liven up a more serious collection.

Style: Baroque