wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
The key figure in this painting's narrative is Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa (63?‒12 BC), general, statesman, architect and close friend to Augustus Caesar, who reigned as the first Roman Emperor from 27 BC. Agrippa moves up the stairs of his impressive villa and away from the petitioners making their requests below, and the objects assembled on the landing. The details of the image are painstakingly represented, from the dramatic fall of Agrippa's red cape, the wide expanses of marble, to the objects laid over the tiger skin. The crowd of people on the right demonstrate the artist's abilities in capturing variations of emotion. The sculpture of Augustus, which represents imperial power and authority, dominates the foreground. It was based on the now-celebrated 'Augustus of Prima Porta', which had only been rediscovered in 1863. This underscores Alma-Tadema's desire for his work to be current and historically accurate.The arm of the statue gestures above the offerings and draws the viewer's eye to the atrium above where the soldiers, or servants, hold fasces. These were bundles of sticks bound together with an axe head protruding. It was a symbol of Ancient Rome that had survived into the modern world, as a representation of collective power, law, and governance. In the distance the visible blue sky indicates the open nature of the villa.This painting was created to impress Sir William Armstrong, a wealthy Newcastle engineer and industrialist, who had admired Alma-Tadema's earlier work An Audience with Agrippa when it was exhibited to great acclaim at the Royal Academy in 1876. Rather than repeat the composition, the artist chose to represent the moment at the end of the 'audience' with the figure of Agrippa walking up the stairs away from the landing, rather than towards it, as in the earlier painting. This later work is more complex and ambitious.The painting was very well received when it was first exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy in 1879.

Style: Victorian
In the 1890s and early 1900s, Cezanne painted numerous views of the Bibémus Quarry. Situated not far from Aix-en-Provence, the site was renowned since Antiquity for its yellow-ochre limestone. But while the artist was mesmerised by the quarry’s chromatic qualities, he also had personal and intellectual reasons to explore this motif. Having spent time in the area as a child, Cezanne had a special connection to Bibémus. Moreover, these rock formations, dating ten to eight million years ago, appealed to his deep interest in Prehistory: 'In order to paint a landscape well, I first need to discover its geological foundations', he once wrote to a friend. Of the eleven oils and sixteen watercolours belonging to the series, this is the only one featuring a human presence. Sitting centrally on some eroded rocks, the tiny figure gives a sense of the scale of the massive cliff.

Style: Impressionist
This small, arresting work was painted at the height of Carus’s friendship with Friedrich. The view looks out through a barred window onto a blue sky streaked with wisps of white cloud, with no features of town of country visible. On the grey stone windowsill a few stalks of straw are scattered. To the right the first few links of a heavy chain are set in the wall. The artist has portrayed a spider’s web just beyond the bars, its delicate threads stretching from top to bottom. Every damage and crack are rendered, from the deep fissures caused by the bars themselves to chips along the front of the ledge. Yet for all the detail, the work is thinly painted with the pale ground showing through throughout.Images of views from windows onto townscapes or landscapes has a long tradition, notably in religious works of the Northern Renaissance. During the Romantic era Friedrich established such images as subjects in their own right, the window depicted as a gateway to the world beyond, often combined with a contemplative figure seen from the back. But here Carus was not aiming to paint the scene through the window, but the window itself, its frame and bars. And it is no studio or domestic window. The patch of sky seen from behind bars, the thick wall, the chain and the blades of straw, perhaps from the floor or escaped from bedding all evoke a prison cell. The artist’s signature incised into the stone perhaps evokes the scratchings by prisoners onto the walls of their cells. And this sense of imprisonment is echoed in the web beyond, a symbol of life or a trap waiting on the other side.Carus is possibly remembering his own views of the barred windows of church ruins. Such a subject also reflects recent events of the Napoleonic Wars, Dresden itself being the site of Napoleon’s last major victory in August 1813. It is perhaps even a reference to Beethoven’s opera Fidelio, performed in Dresden in 1823, which recounted the story of the rescue of a political prisoner from prison. More universally, the window here is not the means through which to observe and depict a view of the outside world, instead it functions as a boundary between interior and exterior, dark and light, imprisonment and liberty. Ultimately the picture addresses the dialogue between fear and hope, captivity and freedom, both physical and psychological.

Style: Romantic
In a simple bare room, featuring only three objects, a sofa, a full-length mirror and a picture on the wall, a young woman stands in quiet contemplation of her appearance. The austerity of the room is matched by the subdued tonality and limited, rather silvery palette, punctuated only by the reddish brown of the sofa, the model’s hair, the brown and gilt of the mirror. She wears a striped dress with an overdress of a pale grey, tied in a bow at the waist with a black fringed scarf. Her hair is piled up with one plait at the back. She holds her hands together, grasping a small red flower, the only touch of bright colour in the picture.Depictions of young women at their mirror were popular among the Impressionist painters, and treated by both French: Manet, Edouard (1832 - 1883) and French: Morisot, Berthe (1841 - 1895). Such images can be placed in a much longer tradition of depictions of women at their toilette, often presented in the guise of Venus, the personification of female beauty, admiring herself in a mirror, as in Spanish: Velázquez, Diego, The Toilet of Venus ('The Rokeby Venus') (NG2057). Many such images play on the theme of vanity, where women, engaged in self-contemplation, even self-admiration, are observed in images which may border on the voyeuristic. Such a sense of vanity is missing from this portrayal of critical and modest self-appraisal.It is probable that Gonzalès painted this in around 1869‒70, after she had left the studio of Charles Chaplin, and started as Manet’s only formal pupil. The handling is broad and generally unmodulated, with the folds on her overdress starkly rendered. Her face, lit from the right, is delicately modelled in light and shadow in shades of grey-brown, matching the grisaille of the picture on the wall, perhaps a reproductive print. This subtle monochrome modelling, which appears to be unique in her own work, is reminiscent of Manet’s work from the 1860s, which would have been present in his studio at this period. The young woman is Gonzalès’s younger sister Jeanne, her constant model throughout her career, and also an artist in her own right. As opportunities for painting professional models in public spaces could be restricted for women at this period, being able to rely on family members was crucial for artists such as Gonzalès. This painting exemplifies the type of domestic subject matter which was in many ways the limit of their permitted sphere of activity. In such a studied portrayal of a single figure Gonzalès was already applying lessons learned from both Chaplin and Manet to her consummate portrayals of the quiet spirit of bourgeois life.

Style: Impressionist
The evening sun touches the sturdy cattle standing at the foot of the ruins of a Roman archway. The soft light casts shadows on the weather-worn stones, displaying the ruin's age and former grandeur. Weeds and trailing plants hang from its crumbling stones. The acute angle of the perspective with which the archway is painted makes it tower above the cattle and the people, seeming to rival the distant mountain for its command over the landscape.

The hills behind may have been seen and recorded by Nicolaes Berchem during a possible stay in Italy, but the cows are unmistakably Dutch cows -- solid, well-nurtured, productive and highly valued for their vital place in the Dutch economy. Berchem places them in a fan shape, a neat way of presenting us with different views of the animals, revealing his skill in painting their sturdy bodies, their deep, resonant colours and characterful faces.

The peasants, like the scenery, appear more Italian than Dutch. The bare-legged young man, up to his ankles in the stream, heaves a heavy load with his dog beside him, keeping an eye on the cows. He, like the second man in the painting, wears a big shady hat that seems suited to the hot Italian -- rather than the weaker Northern -- sun. The second man, swathed in a heavy cloak, seems a close relative of the Neapolitan brigands in Salvator Rosa’s paintings. One looks up at the mounted young woman perched high up on her laden donkey; her gesture in response to his gaze is open to interpretation, but her elevated position and fresh, clean garments seem to give her a status superior to his.

Berchem paints the light catching her high forehead, the sleeves of her costume and a cloth on the donkey’s back where she rests a dainty, bare foot. It gives the deep blue of her bodice a rich sheen, but it’s the bright red of her billowing skirt -- the one touch of red in the picture -- that lifts and enlivens the scene; many years later, the English artists Turner and Constable understood and often used this effect.

Berchem's work, like that of other Italianate painters -- so-called because they had lived in Italy and been influenced by the work of Italian artists, the southern landscape and the remnants of Antiquity -- was highly prized by collectors especially in France but also in Britain, throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. His paintings could fetch a huge amount until well into the nineteenth century. In the latter half of that century they began to be seen as 'un-Dutch' and therefore less interesting. The picture became part of Sir Robert Peel's large collection of Dutch and Flemish paintings. When the collection was bought for the nation in 1871, the taste for such paintings was perhaps already seen as rather old-fashioned. Italianate landscapes were more widely appreciated after a groundbreaking exhibition held in 1965.

Style: Baroque
An older man sits, legs crossed and head bowed, absorbed in his reading. This is Cezanne's father, Louis-Auguste. He was probably in his early sixties when his son painted this portrait directly onto an alcove wall in the salon of Jas de Bouffan, the country residence outside Aix-en-Provence that Louis-Auguste had bought in 1859.

A photograph said to have been taken in 1905 shows the portrait still in place, flanked by four paintings of the seasons (Petit Palais, Paris).

Style: Impressionist
This gloriously cluttered  picture suggests the aftermath of a rich banquet that's gone a little too far. Objects sit on the table at a perilous angle or seem to materialise from nowhere, but the one that takes centre stage is secure. It's called a nautilus cup and is meant to impress. It's made from a real nautilus shell, at the time a rare and costly item. On top are the gilded figures of Neptune and some feisty-looking  tritons, his fierce mythical attendants, riding a sea-horse with wings. At the base, a merman takes the strain of holding the cup and the heads of sea-monsters look out below him.

A tube ending in a silver dragon's head lies beside the nautilus, seemingly coming from nowhere. If it were upright, we'd see that it's the spout of an ornate silver jug -- the dragon's head forms its tip. Looking down at the jug is a small silver figurine of a soldier, dressed in the costume of a hundred years before. Behind him a roemer (a stumpy wine glass with florets of glass on the stems) seems to float in mid-air until you see that it's tucked into a clip attached to his back. Beside him there's a bowl holding rock salt, another precious commodity, and a half-full tankard of beer.

A feast should have food, and Gerrit Willemsz. Heda has placed a huge fish on a pewter plate. But it's on the edge of the table, easily knocked off; the roemers next to it are also in danger. They tip slightly on the lip of a shallow dish that protrudes out from the table. Gerrit doesn't necessarily want to give an impression of instability -- he may have used this method to show skill at projecting objects into space towards us.

Parts of the picture are well painted: the nautilus, the crispy textured flesh of the fish, the soldier, the beer and wine seen through the surface of the glasses, and the reflection of a window in the roemers. The rest is less skilled; the curtain, for instance, is barely sketched in. Gerrit worked for most of his career in the studio of his father Willem Claesz. Heda, so there may have been collaboration. The roemers, the silver jug and the salt pot all appear in paintings by Willem: Still life: Pewter and Silver Vessels and a Crab and Still Life with a Lobster. They may have been part of a stock of such items used as props in paintings.

What was a picture of such a seemingly strange collection of objects for? The clue is, again, in Willem's pictures. Still Life with a Lobster seems to have been painted for a guild of merchants in Haarlem, where both artists worked, identified by a cipher on the tablecloth. The fish, salt and nautilus all have a connection to the sea. Perhaps Gerrit's picture was also a commission from a guild of merchants who dealt in such goods.

Style: Baroque
This is one of Zurbarán's most austere and intensely spiritual works. He shows Saint Francis in a moment of profound contemplation, his head tilted upwards, mouth slightly open, and his hands clasped in fervent prayer.

Deep shadow obscures the saint's face, giving us only a glimpse of his features -- the tip of his nose, his upturned eyes and parted lips. The stark lighting emphasises the coarse texture of his roughly patched robe, his tattered clothing bringing to mind the saint's vow of poverty. He cradles a skull against his body. The skull is a symbol of death and refers to Christ's crucifixion -- the subject of the saint's meditation. His hands are marked with the stigmata, the wounds of Christ's crucifixion, which Francis is believed to have received in 1224 during a retreat on Mount Alverna in the Apennines.

Saint Francis founded the Franciscan Order in the thirteenth century. Here, he wears a brown robe (or habit) and a rope girdle with three knots, each representing a vow of poverty, chastity and obedience; this identifies him as a member of the branch known as the Franciscan Capuchins.

Zurbarán's limited colour palette and use of a simple background setting ensure that nothing distracts us from Saint Francis's meditation. Focusing our attention on a single figure was in keeping with the ideas of the Counter-Reformation in his Spiritual Exercises, Saint Ignatius of Loyola, theologian and founder of the Jesuit Order, taught that viewers should be encouraged to identify with the saints portrayed in religious imagery and to lead their lives in imitation of them. Meditation on death was particularly favoured by the Jesuits, as a spiritual exercise, and saints contemplating skulls are frequently found in seventeenth-century Italian and Spanish painting. Indeed over 40 paintings of this subject survive by Zurbarán and his assistants alone.

When the National Gallery purchased this work from King Louis-Philippe's celebrated Galerie Espagnole in 1853, the acquisition was heavily criticised. In a letter to The Times, William Coningham MP described the painting as a ‘small, black, repulsive picture’. Today it is considered one of Zurbarán's greatest works. Striking for its modernity and powerful spirituality, this painting effectively conveys the intense emotion experienced through prayer.

This work was probably made around the same time as our other painting of Saint Francis in meditation, which Zurbarán signed and dated 1639. There, the saint wears the same habit and contemplates a skull, but his gesture suggests a more outward conversation with God as he kneels in a landscape.

Style: Baroque