wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
We don’t know their names, but this was undoubtedly a wealthy fashion-conscious family, almost certainly from Antwerp where the artist, Gonzales Coques, was based. Perhaps they were local nobility, or possibly lace merchants or producers. Their clothes are trimmed with copious amount of exquisitely decorated lace which was a speciality in the city in the seventeenth century. Some estimates suggest that about half the population was involved in the industry.

By the 1660s, when this painting was made, family group portraits had been popular in the Low Countries for decades, though different styles were popular in different cities. In Antwerp the fashion had moved from a fairly static arrangement of parents and children to a preference for more animated compositions. Artists like Coques incorporated gestures and activities to bring the scene to life and to suggest some of the relationships between the individuals, their roles in the family or particular talents they might have.

There are some interesting subtleties in this painting. The father, who stands slightly detached from his wife and daughters, looks serious and slightly preoccupied, his eyes cast down to his left. His son, preoccupied in a different way -- by the antics of a tame bird -- also looks in this direction. His skirts may seem feminine to us but it was the style of the time; his loose hair and hat signal his masculinity. The bird may allude to falconry, a suitably elite and manly activity for the heir to the family name.

The wife and daughters all look out on a contrasting diagonal. The three eldest catch the viewer's eye, as does the youngest who looks slightly bemused in her baby-walker (then called a loopstoel). We can see from her lute or cittern that the second eldest must have had musical talent, while the sister next to her would rather be playing with her brother and his bird.

So this sequence of family figures forms a graceful arc, both linked and distinguished by different looks and gestures. However, though she smiles warmly at us, the eldest daughter stands behind the rest of the group, slightly outside the arc. It may be that she is about to marry and so leave her immediate family. She is gathering roses -- one of the attributes of Venus -- and these are often symbolic of love and marriage. Perhaps this portrait marks the last months of the family’s time together.

The architecture and stone sculptures which frame the painting are also typical elements in group portraits of this kind. They almost certainly represent artistic fantasy rather than a real scene, and are intended to hint at wealth and fashionability. Similarly, the landscape in the distance, which may have been painted by an assistant or collaborator, is often an allusion to a landed estate. You might have spotted the parrot too, just to the right of the rosebush. This, like the two dogs wrestling in the foreground, was probably a family pet. Parrots often appear in paintings of this time -- they were expensive and highly coveted in the upper echelons of Flemish society.

Style: Baroque
A young man stands leaning to one side, his arm resting on a stone plinth, a brocade curtain behind him. His gaze is soft and he has a slight smile on his face, a faint moustache above his lip. The artist has concentrated on the curled hair -- probably a wig -- and the elaborate, expensive lace at the man's neck and wrist. Long slender fingers show the influence of van Dyck -- for example, look at his Portrait of George Gage with Two Attendants.

The plinth shows a relief carving of Eros, the god of love, doing battle with Pan, the horned god associated with fertility. The sculpture, then, symbolises true love overcoming lust. The portrait may have celebrated a betrothal or a marriage, when a young man would be expected to settle down to domesticity -- perhaps after living a more carefree life. But since we don't know his identity, we can't be sure if this has any significance for the young sitter.

Behind the man, on the right outside the room, clouds billow over a sloping hill. Below the window we can see a frieze of carved classical figures but it's difficult to make out who they are. This is hardly the background for an admiral in the British Navy, as the sitter was once thought to be; the name suggested was Admiral Lord Berkeley. Even in a wedding portrait, a leading figure in the Navy might be expected to have ships or some sort of insignia in the background. And at the date inscribed on the portrait, '1679', none of the members of the Berkeley family who had reached this rank were the age of the man we see here. If he is one of the earls of Berkeley, the only likely person is Charles, 2nd Earl of Berkeley, who was envoy to the Netherlands from 1689 to 1694 -- even then, this time period is too late, and our sitter doesn't resemble the only other known portrait of Charles.

The picture was once thought to have been painted by Caspar Netscher while he was a student of Gerard ter Borch, but it's now considered to be a studio replica by an unknown artist, of a painting by Netscher dated 1678 (now in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam). The signature and date aren't in Netscher's handwriting and were probably added later.

Style: Baroque
Philip  IV, King of Spain, looks middle-aged, and tired: his sagging flesh and puffy eyes suggest the weight of responsibility resting on his shoulders during his long reign (1621–65), which began when he was only 16. This portrait was painted in about 1656, when Philip was facing particular challenges caused by the ongoing Thirty Years' War. He appears worn down by the loss of family and Spain's declining political fortunes.

The King's pale face stands out against the sombre black of his clothing and the plain background. His eyes stare out steadily, with a look that  commands respect but is also intensely human. Velázquez has shown him as calm and dignified, his hair arranged in regular waves that frame his face and rest neatly on his collar. He wears the Order of the Golden Fleece, a chivalric order whose pendant took the form of a suspended sheepskin, on the gold chain around his neck. The pendant would have been instantly recognisable to seventeenth-century viewers.

Velázquez painted many portraits of Philip throughout the latter's reign, and this is the last painted image of the King by the man who served him as court artist from 1623. This work makes an interesting contrast with an earlier, full-length portrait, Philip IV of Spain in Brown and Silver. The King's black costume, which he habitually wore and in which he was usually depicted, is less ostentatious than in the other portrait, although he wears the same type of collar, called the golilla, and sports the same distinctive upturned moustache.

Velázquez's brushwork is free, creating an impression of his subject instead of recording him in minute detail -- a style typical of his later works. The form of Philip's eyes is merely suggested and loose flicks of paint define the highlights on his chain, the gold buttons and the gold embroidery around his sleeves.

Philip seems to have approved of this portrait: many copies were made after it by Velázquez's pupils, and given as gifts to members of the court and visiting dignitaries. The portrait was also engraved by Pedro Villafranca for the frontispiece of Francisco de los Santos's Descripción breve de San Lorenzo el Real de El Escorial (1657). In 1658, shortly after painting this portrait, Velázquez was made a Knight of Santiago, an honour he had always desired and which was probably aided by the King's support.

Style: Baroque
This is the central part of a fresco which was once flanked by two standing saints --  one beardless and one bearded -- whose heads are the only remaining fragments. Together they formed a so-called 'street tabernacle' in the city of Florence. Street tabernacles were like like open-air altarpieces placed on the walls of a building for all to see. Its original outdoor location explains why it is damaged in some places, for example in the faces of the Virgin and Child.

The artist has signed the image on the steps of the throne: DOMINICUS/D[E]. VENECIIS. P[INXIT] ('Domenico from Venice painted this').  According to the sixteenth-century artist and biographer Vasari it was one of the first works that Domenico painted in Florence where he began to work in around 1430. He certainly marked his presence in the city with this work which apparently sparked the envy of his fellow artists.

We see the Virgin Mary with the three members of the Trinity -- God the Father, Christ and the Holy Ghost. The painting's grand and simple design within a painted three-dimensional arch recalls Masaccio's Trinity, which he painted for Santa Maria Novella in Florence in the 1420s and which Domenico surely knew. Domenico also imitates the innovative positioning of the haloes that Masaccio used for the first time in the altarpiece he made for Santa Maria del Carmine, Pisa. Rather than sitting upright behind the heads of the holy figures the haloes hover above, projecting in front and behind. This increases the sense of the space around them and the three-dimensionality of the scenes.

The sides of the throne also seem to jut out towards us, giving us the sense that the Virgin and Christ Child  are really seated on a deep throne within this imaginary space. The throne's arms mirrors those of God the Father; he is shown swooping in, surrounded by golden rays of heavenly light, presenting the Virgin and Child to the people on the street below. The rays coming from his mouth represent the Holy Ghost, and descend upon the dove, its symbol. Their presence confirms and emphasises the spiritual importance of the mother and child.

The image of God the Father with the Holy Ghost in the form of the dove was rare in Italian painting at this time, but it was often found in images of Christ's baptism (such as Niccolò di Pietro Gerini's Baptism of Christ) as they were both described as having played a role. The bold representation of God the Father shown dispatching a dove can also be found in an altarpiece by Lorenzo Veneziano, a Venetian painter, but this is shown above a scene of the Annunciation in which the Holy Ghost also played a crucial role.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
Christ's head is shown in vivid close up in this little picture, his pale face and brilliant robe stark against the black background. Bright light falling from the left allows us to see every pitiful detail: the thorns thrust into his forehead, the blood dripping down his face and his red-rimmed eyes. A single tear falls from his left eye as he gazes past us and into the future, at the horror of his imminent suffering and death on the Cross.

This image of Christ is traditionally known as the 'Ecce Homo' ('Behold the Man') or 'Christ Crowned with Thorns'. According to the Bible (John 19: 5), before Christ was crucified he was beaten and mocked by the Roman soldiers. They dressed him in a rich robe and put a crown of thorns on his head, saying: 'Hail, King of the Jews'. Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, then showed Christ to the crowd and said, 'Behold the Man', as in Christ presented to the People (Ecce Homo) by Correggio.

Small devotional paintings like this were used to aid private prayer, and we know from inventories that both wealthy and more ordinary families owned them. Although empathy with the crucified Christ was an important feature of Renaissance spirituality, this is an unusual painting in many ways. It has a kind of emotional impact which is rare in the work of Cima da Conegliano -- it seems that Italian painters and patrons of the late fifteenth century may have preferred images of the dead Christ, such as Bellini's The Dead Christ supported by Angels, to the Ecce Homo. However, there is one other example of this subject in the National Gallery's collection, Christ Crowned with Thorns by Pietro Perugino, and Andrea Solario also painted various versions at around the same date.

Cima might have derived the idea from Netherlandish art where such paintings were very popular, particularly in the work of Dirk Bouts, who painted many versions. Perhaps Cima had seen a Netherlandish Ecce Homo in Venice, although the emphasis is subtly different  in his version -- less on the incarnate deity and more on the man's acceptance of his suffering and imminent death. Gone are the burnished gold backgrounds and haloes, replaced by dramatic lighting and chiaroscuro effects which hark back to Giovanni Bellini's later oil paintings, such as his Virgin and Child with Two Saints (Galleria dell'Accademia, Venice).

The painting's small size means that it was meant to be seen from close to, where it had maximum impact, and its intense emotion was intended to arouse pity. The original owner who commissioned this work for his private chamber might have knelt before it or even have held it his or her hands while meditating on the pain of the Passion.

Style: High Renaissance
This is one of a series of four paintings by Veronese that concern the trials and rewards of love, although their precise meanings remain unclear. The titles are not original and were given to the paintings in 1727. The compositions are designed to be seen from below, so we know the pictures were intended for a ceiling or a series of ceilings.

The paintings were recorded in 1648 in the collection of the Holy Roman Emperor in Prague. We do not know who commissioned them, but it is most likely that the patron of the Four Allegories of Love was Italian and that the paintings were still in Italy in the 1620s, when Anthony van Dyck recorded two of the compositions in his Italian sketchbook (British Museum, London). It is possible that the paintings were made for the parallel suites of rooms of a husband and wife, two for the reception room and bedchamber of the man and two for the equivalent rooms of his spouse.This painting and Respect arguably seem particularly intended for a male viewer.

This painting is the most difficult to interpret of the series. A naked man is lying on an entablature beneath a ruined classical structure, which is decorated with two sculptures, one a limbless satyr or faun (half-man, half-goat), the other a standing figure holding panpipes in a niche. In classical mythology such creatures were associated with raw sexuality. Cupid is standing on the man’s chest, beating him with his bow. Its string has snapped, suggesting that love itself is broken. Cupid seems to be chastising the man for his devotion to hedonistic sexuality.

A bare-breasted woman looks down on the man as she is lead away by another woman holding an ermine (the white animal has a black-tipped tail). During the Italian Renaissance, the ermine was an emblem of purity and moderation, as well as of pregnancy and childbirth, as the animal was believed to protect pregnant women. Leonardo employed the ermine as a symbol to express these concepts in his portrait Lady with an Ermine (National Museum, Kraków).

The two women with joined hands may be understood as an illustration of how love encompasses, but is also split between, desire and devotion. The two women may represent earthly and celestial love, holding hands because they are both essential and in synthesis. The stone satyr appears to symbolise bestial love, which is inadmissible in a virtuous life. Although this painting was given the title Scorn in 1727, its subject seems to relate to contemporary Neoplatonic ideas about love, as also expressed in Titian's Sacred and Profane Love of about 1514 (Galleria Borghese, Rome).

A sheet of figure studies in pen and ink by Veronese for this series of paintings exists in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The five different positions in which the naked man in Scorn is drawn shows the attention Veronese gave to problems of foreshortening, perhaps using a wax model of the figure to help resolve the pose.

Style: High Renaissance
This small painting seems to have been made in two stages, possibly by different artists for different patrons several decades apart. A young man -- the donor -- kneels at the door of a late medieval building. He looks out into a walled garden with a flowering bench around the edges, a frequent feature of medieval gardens.

Seated here is the Virgin Mary. She holds the Christ Child, who blesses the donor with one hand and holds a string of coral and glass beads in the other. The Virgin was often shown in a walled garden in medieval art, as it was understood as a symbol of her purity: she was herself called a hortus conclusus, a 'garden enclosed'. Six saints peer curiously over the wall, while behind them is a rolling landscape of hills and cities where daily life continues. In the sky above, angels hold a crown over the Virgin's head and Saint Michael pushes Satan down from heaven. Heaven would originally have been shown at the top, but this part of the panel has been cut off.

The artist's style resembles that of Lieven van Lathem, a painter and illuminator working for the Burgundian Court in the 1460s and 1470s, but the donor's clothes are in the fashion of around 1500. There were no major changes in the course of painting and the donor seems to have been painted by the same artist and at the same time as the other figures. Could the painting have been begun in the 1470s, when the underdrawing was done, but not painted until around 1500?

Heraldic devices perhaps help to solve the mystery. Above the window we see the emblems of a steel, flint and sparks, which were associated with the dukes of Burgundy. The donor wears the collar of the Order of the Golden Fleece -- a prestigious order of knights founded by Philip the Good in 1430 -- and so must be both a duke of Burgundy and a knight of the Order. He is evidently Philip the Handsome, Archduke of Austria, King of Castile and ruler of the Low Countries, who also appears in Philip the Handsome.

The painting did not, however, always show Philip. Technical analysis reveals a shield with a coat of arms in the underdrawing, below his hat and evidently leaning against the wall. It shows two keys, a canting device (a visual pun on a family name): the clés unies (linked keys) stand for the Clugny family from Autun. The painting was presumably begun for them, but either abandoned and picked up later by another patron, or changed into a portrait of Philip on their instructions. One of Lieven's sons, Jacob, was painter and valet de chambre to Philip the Handsome. None of his works have yet been identified but he might perhaps be the artist of our panel, adapting a work begun in his father's workshop some decades earlier.

Style: High Renaissance
This painting on canvas, together with another group of heads, is a copy of part of Correggio's destroyed fresco, The Coronation of the Virgin, painted in the apse of S. Giovanni Evangelista in Parma. A number of fragments of Correggio's original fresco are also in the National Gallery's collection: Head of an Angel, Heads of Two Angels and another Head of an Angel. When the apse was rebuilt in 1587, a replica of Correggio's Coronation of the Virgin was painted in the new apse by Cesare Aretusi.

This group of heads is a copy of the figures behind Saint John the Evangelist on the left of Correggio's fresco. The central infant angel is a copy of one of the fresco fragments in the National Gallery.

It is likely to be an early copy made before Correggio's original fresco was detached from the apse of S. Giovanni Evangelista in the 1580s. When it was in the Farnese Collection in Rome, this copy was believed to be by Annibale Carracci. Annibale wrote a letter to his cousin Lodovico from Parma on 28 April 1580 saying that he was engaged in copying heads by Correggio from 'the cupola'. He may have been referring to either the cupola of S. Giovanni Evangelista or the cupola of the Cathedral, for which Correggio signed the contract in 1522.

Annibale was probably copying frescoes at Parma by Correggio in both 1580 and 1586, and it is possible that he painted two sets of copies of Correggio's apse fresco -- one set now in Naples, the other in Parma. The Parma set may have been made for Aretusi to use when painting the replica fresco. However, we do not know whether the National Gallery copies were made by Annibale Carracci as it is difficult to identify the artist's own style in a copy.

Style: High Renaissance
This is a copy of a signed work by Salvator Rosa of about 1645 (now in the Pitti Palace, Florence). It depicts an episode from the life of Diogenes, the ancient Greek philosopher who wanted to be free of all earthly attachments. Upon seeing a boy using his hands to drink from a stream, Diogenes threw away his bowl, his last remaining possession. The philosopher, dressed in blue, appears in the centre of this work, clutching his bowl in his right hand.

During the 1640s, Rosa worked in Florence. He wanted to be seen as a painter of philosophical subjects, but this tranquil scene with its exquisitely painted details, like the glowing light on the horizon that throws the figures and trees into darkness, shows his immense talent for landscape painting. The towering mountains in the distance and silhouetted branches in the foreground would become staple characteristics of his work.

Style: Baroque, Academic
A dramatic landscape unfolds in this small picture. Although the painting has a biblical subject, it is the mountains and sky that demand our attention. Towering clouds open up to reveal a radiant sun, and pine trees grow on the steep cliffs, framing an expanse of water and sky. It takes a moment to notice that people are scattered throughout the landscape, dwarfed as they are by nature, and even then, the painting's subject is not immediately clear.

The action seems to take place by the two boats moored on the water’s edge. The story can be found in the Gospel of Luke, which recounts how Christ was standing beside the lake of Gennesaret, better known as the Sea of Galilee, as a crowd gathered to hear the word of God. He saw that two boats were empty, the fishermen drying their nets, and decided to board the one belonging to a man named Simon. He addressed the crowds from there. A small figure dressed in blue is visible on the larger boat, his right arm pointing upwards to God. A very faint halo further identifies him as Christ.

After his address, Christ instructed Simon to lower his nets into the water, even though the fishermen had caught nothing so far. Miraculously, when the nets were raised they held a huge haul of fish. Somewhat cryptically, Christ said to Simon that from now on he would be catching people instead of fish. The fishermen who witnessed this miracle -- Simon, James, John, and Simon’s brother Andrew (not mentioned by Luke) -- decided to abandon their livelihoods then and there, and to follow Christ instead. These men would become Christ’s apostles, and the story’s protagonist Simon is better known as Saint Peter.

Herman Saftleven signed the bottom left of his picture on a rock above and to the left of a child’s head. Bought by Sir Charles Eastlake, first Director of the National Gallery, it remains the artist's only picture in the Gallery's collection. Saftleven, who was born in Rotterdam, started specialising in landscape painting at about the same time that he settled in Utrecht in 1633. From the 1650s onwards, he started painting landscapes like this one, with scenery inspired by his travels through the Rhineland, sometimes with a mythological or religious subject.

Style: Baroque