wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
In 1980, when this painting was cleaned and restored, it was discovered to be assembled from fragments. It is part of a circular painting (tondo) on wood that was originally made as a ceiling decoration. It was commissioned in 1524 by Alfonso I d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, and painted for the Camera del Poggiolo (balcony room) in the Estense Castle, connected to the ducal palace, in Ferrara. Originally it had five figures. The other surviving fragment, Boy with a Basket of Flowers, is now in the Fondazione Longhi in Florence.

In the National Gallery’s painting, two figures, a woman and a man with his hand over her shoulder, lean over a parapet. The figures are painted as if seen from below with what must have been startlingly sharp definition. The woman, whose blonde curls are crowned with a wreath of jasmine, appears to be speaking or singing to the man beside her. The surviving fragment of her hand suggests she was perhaps about to drop something into our space below. The man wears a black jacket and cap and has a sprig of jasmine tucked behind his left ear. The boy in the Fondazione Longhi fragment is laughing and looks as though he is about to tip the flowers from his basket on our heads. The flowers are painted with remarkable accuracy.

The blue of the sky would also have been repeated in the coffering of the ceiling, where it was used as a background for gold rosettes. Technical examination reveals that the ultramarine sky in Dosso's tondo was painted on top of another background, possibly of imaginary architecture. Documents record that Dosso received copious quantities of ultramarine for this painting, so it is likely that he painted the sky on top of the earlier background, probably as a result of the decision to decorate the ceiling blue.

The tradition of ingenious ceiling decorations to which this tondo belongs originated with the ceiling that Andrea Mantegna painted in the Camera Picta (painted room) of the ducal palace in Mantua between 1465 and 1474. This features a painted oculus (literally ‘eye’), or imaginary circular opening to the sky, with people and cherubs looking over a parapet into the room below. Such decorations often featured members of the household and were humorous or festive in character. Examples existed in several north Italian cities by the 1520s and were certainly to be seen in Ferrara where Garofalo produced examples in the Palazzo Costabili (about 1506) and Palazzo Sacrati (1519).

A 1650 description of Dosso’s tondo said that it included ‘a portrait of il Gonella, who is an old man as well as a great character.’ Pietro Gonnella or Gonella (1390--1441), was the most famous of the many dwarves attached to the Este court. Although he lived in the fifteenth century, his fame was such that the nickname Gonella was given to other court dwarves during the Renaissance. The man in the National Gallery’s fragment may be Gonella, though he may have been one of the two figures now missing from the tondo. All knowledge of the original meaning of the painting has been lost.

Style: High Renaissance
Saint John the Baptist sits on a stone ledge, his attribute of a reed cross leaning against his shoulder. John was a hermit and prophet who lived in the wilderness, baptising people in the river Jordan and preaching repentance of sins. The scroll in his right hand bears a Latin inscription: ECCE AGNUS DEI ('Behold the Lamb of God'). These are the words the saint spoke when he baptised Christ and recognised him as the Messiah.

This painting was part of the upper tier of a large, multi-panelled altarpiece made for the oratory of S. Pietro in Vincoli, Faenza, other parts of which are also in the National Gallery's collection. The Virgin and Child appeared enthroned at the centre of the altarpiece; Saint John would originally have been looking at and gesturing to the infant Christ. A painting of Saint John the Evangelist appeared on the other side of The Virgin and Child.

The two Saints John were probably somewhat lower than the crowning panel, which showed the dead Christ supported by angels. This panel was described in a letter of 1770, but was perhaps separated from the rest of the altarpiece soon after -- it was not included in an description published in 1780, when the polyptych was in the Hercolani collection. The top panel can probably be identified with a Dead Christ that was by the 1880s in the collection of the Glasgow businessman and Liberal MP William Graham. It was bought at his sale by Monsignor Robert H. Benson, a writer and priest (firstly Anglican and then Catholic), but we do not know where it is now.

Style: High Renaissance
A young girl rejects the advances of an old man at the left. At the right two elderly women are seated, one spinning and the other asleep. The seated figures may have been inspired by the peasant scenes of the Le Nain brothers. This is the last in a series of four canvases by Lancret (all in the collection) which represent the Four Ages of Man - 'Childhood', ‘Adolescence’, 'Youth', and 'Old Age'.

Style: Baroque, Rococo
After being condemned to death by Pontius Pilate, Christ was taken away by soldiers, crowned with thorns and called ‘King of the Jews’ (Matthew 27: 26--31). Although all the Gospels describe how Christ was led away to be crucified, only John tells us that he carried his own cross (John 19: 16--17).

Here we see Christ carrying his cross to Calvary to be crucified.  Blood drips down his forehead, which is pierced by the thorns with which he has been crowned by his tormentors. We are placed in the position of an onlooker in the crowd as he passes by. The drama and pathos of the moment and our sense of intimacy with Christ is heightened by the very close focus on his face and the extremes of light and dark. He does not look at us but downward, as though contemplating his fate. Only a very small part of the wooden cross is included and the artist relies on our familiarity with this type of image to enable us to identify what it is.

The painting does not seem to have been cut down and was probably always intended to be this size -- the paint at the top and bottom does not quite extend to the edges and at the left it goes over them. This painting is therefore probably not a fragment of a larger picture but an independent devotional work.

The picture is painted on wooden panel and has suffered extensive damage. The darkest paint, used for Christ’s hair and in the deep shadows, is cracked and flaking, particularly in the lower parts of Christ’s hair and the background beyond his halo. However something of the original quality of the work can still be seen in Christ’s beard, where fine hairs are brushed and scratched into the thick scumbled paint and lie curled over the edges of the softly modelled and expressive lips.

Bust-length paintings of Christ carrying his cross had become popular in Venice and Lombardy by the end of the fifteenth century. There was a very famous painting of this subject in the church of S. Rocco in Venice of about 1505, attributed both to Giorgione and Titian, which was celebrated for the miracles it worked. This painting, now in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Venice, also has a very dark, almost black, background.

This subject was also treated in close-up by Altobello Melone and Giampietrino, influenced by a silver-point drawing of the subject by Leonardo now in the Accademia, Venice. Sodoma, like many contemporary painters working in Lombardy, adopted Leonardo’s style, emulating his smoky painterly effect. The painting looks like his work, but it is hard to be certain given its condition.

Style: High Renaissance
The Virgin Mary stands or sits by an open window through which we can see a distant landscape. The Christ Child is cradled in her arms -- he has the fingers of one hand in his mouth and clutches at his mother's veil, which wraps around him, with the other. Two angels peer over the Virgin's shoulder at the child: the one in the foreground holds a thistle, which was understood as a symbol of the Passion of Christ on account of its thorns.

This small-scale painting was made for private devotion, one of thousands of such images painted in Renaissance Italy. It is usually accepted as a late work by Liberale da Verona, made after his return to his native city in 1492 or thereabouts. A related drawing (Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest) shows the foremost angel with a musical instrument rather than a flower.

Liberale's style was heavily indebted to that of Andrea Mantegna. The rather chubby, wide-eyed faces of the Virgin and Christ, the Virgin's red dress and blue cloak edged with gold embroidery and the way the translucent veil wraps around Christ all hark back to his most important Veronese work, the San Zeno Altarpiece of about 1460.

Style: Early Renaissance
A girl pulling on a stocking at the right is attended by a young man standing by her. The centre of attention in the room is another girl bedecked in flowers who admires herself in a mirror.

This is the second in a series of four canvases by Lancret (all in the collection) which represent the Four Ages of Man - 'Childhood', ‘Adolescence’, 'Youth', and 'Old Age'. The subject of 'Childhood' is play. The 'games' in 'Adolescence' have a more amorous purpose.

Style: Baroque, Rococo
This full-length portrait of Armand-Jean du Plessis, duc de Richelieu (1585--1642) celebrates his powerful position within the French Church and government. He is dressed in the robe and skull cap of a cardinal, a position granted to him in 1622. His left hand lifts the robe to reveal a delicate layer of lace, also visible on his sleeves, beneath the great expanse of sumptuous red fabric. Richelieu is painted larger than life size, although his small head is out of proportion with his body. His tall and imposing appearance is accentuated by the block of colour of his robes and their generous folds. Around his neck hangs the cross of the Order of the Holy Spirit, symbolised by a dove. On the right, a highly ornate chair with a deeply padded cushion signifies his high-ranking office as France's Chief Minister, a position he held from 1624 until his death.

Richelieu is shown standing, a pose usually seen in seventeenth-century portraits of secular figures such as kings and princes, in celebration of his outstanding achievements as a politician. Members of the clergy were traditionally shown seated. The richly embroidered golden curtain has been opened to reveal the terrace to the left and garden beyond which may be a view of the Cardinal's château at Rueil, near Paris. Richelieu's face, which stares out at the viewer, was repeated in Champaigne's Triple Portrait of Cardinal de Richelieu of around 1642, where it is flanked by two profile views.

This is one of seven versions of the full-length portrait painted between 1633 and 1640 which show Richelieu in various settings. In each the cardinal either holds or wears a biretta, a cardinal's hat. In this painting, and another in the Royal Collection, the artist places Richelieu in the same pose, holding the hat at arm's length. The act of removing the hat embodies his dual role within the Church and state.

This is the most finished and carefully-painted version, one of only a few works that the artist signed. It may be the last version, painted in around 1640, which remained in the artist's studio as a model for other portraits and was particularly admired by Richelieu. Yet it is unlikely that the artist would have signed a work that he kept, which suggests that this version was intended as a gift. One version was displayed in Richelieu's Paris residence, the Palais-Cardinal, now part of the Palais Royale -- an engraving made after the painting shows a Latin inscription has been added which is missing from our painting.

Champaigne spent most of his career working in Paris. He painted the other great French ministers of the seventeenth century: Cardinal Mazarin (1602--1661) in about 1653 (Musée Condé, Chantilly) and Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619--1683) in 1655 (Metropolitan Museum, New York).

Style: Baroque, Academic
This painting and Saints Nicholas of Tolentino and John the Baptist are panels from the Dal Ponte Altarpiece by Giovanni Martino Spanzotti. It was a multi-part altarpiece known as a polyptych, and these panels would have formed part of the upper tier. We can tell this because the vaulted ceiling is painted as though viewed from below. The altarpiece was made for the church of San Francesco in Casale Monferrato, a town about 60 km east of Turin.

Saint Peter Martyr was a Dominican friar from Verona. He holds a martyr's palm, while in his head is the hatchet with which perceived heretics assassinated him. The bishop may be Saint Evasio, of about the third century AD, who was a missionary and bishop of nearby Asti. He was beheaded by pagans in the forests surrounding Casale Monferrato and his relics are preserved in the Cathedral there.

The other panels of the altarpiece are in Turin, Milan and a private collection. Saint Francis and Saint Agatha with Kneeling Donor (Accademia Albertina, Turin) was the left-hand panel of the main tier. The pattern of the haloes and the rosetted ceiling resembles those in the National Gallery’s pictures and the style seems very similar. The altarpiece was dedicated to Saint Andrew and he was depicted in the main panel (Brera, Milan). The right-hand panel of the main tier was Saints Catherine and Sebastian (Brera, Milan). The halo and elaborately tiled floor patterns in the Brera panels are very like those in the Turin panel. The Turin and Milan panels are wider than those in the National Gallery, which have not been cut. This suggests that the upper tier was narrower than the main tier of the altarpiece, or that it was framed differently.

The meticulously depicted luxury, humanity and sense of space in the main tier panels show the influence of Francesco del Cossa, with whom Spanzotti had worked in Bologna as a young man, Flemish and Burgundian painting, as well as the work of Foppa and Bramantino in Milan.

Style: Early Renaissance
Two saints stand on a fantastically cusped stone plinth in front of a rose hedge. They are Francis and Mark, identified by their attributes -- the symbols with which they are traditionally associated -- and by the inscriptions in the front of the plinth. Mark, one of the Four Evangelists, holds a copy of his Gospel, while Francis is dressed in a brown habit and holds a crucifix.

They were once the right wing of a triptych (an altarpiece in three parts) painted in the 1440s by Antonio Vivarini and his brother-in-law and partner Giovanni d'Alemagna. The left wing, Saints Peter and Jerome, is also in our collection. The whole altarpiece was originally in the church of San Moisè in Venice, presumably on a side altar dedicated to the Virgin (according to church law, altarpieces had to reflect the dedication of the altar on which they stood).

The saints on the altarpiece would have been chosen by its patrons. Saint Mark was the patron saint of Venice and Saint Francis was hugely popular in the fifteenth century. He was the founder of the Franciscan Order, an order of friars who took religious vows but were not confined to a monastery -- they lived in towns and cities. The three knots on his belt symbolise the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience that all Franciscans took. Through a tear in the side of his robe you can see the marks of the stigmata -- the wounds of the Crucifixion which miraculously appeared on Francis's body.

Antonio and Giovanni collaborated on many altarpieces and it is hard to work out which artist did which bits. The way the figures and draperies are painted in this panel is different to in the panel of Saints Peter and Jerome -- compare the faces, hands and feet in particular. Perhaps Giovanni, who might have specialised in the kind of yellow of Saint Peter's cloak, did Peter and Jerome while Antonio did Francis and Mark.

It was very unusual in Venetian art of this period to show saints standing on plinths like this, as if they are sculptures: the idea was picked up by Crivell later in the century, as in the Demidoff Altarpiece. The Vivarini workshop possibly also worked on colouring sculpture and maybe took the idea from contemporary altarpieces and tombs.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
Several of Frans Hals’s portraits show his sitters leaning slightly backwards like this. It’s an unconventional pose, but one which gives a strong impression of immediacy and informality: the man here seems to have just pushed back his chair and turned towards us.

The sense of spontaneity is enhanced by the way Hals has manipulated our gaze. He didn't want viewers to get lost in the detail of the sitter's costume, for example: his concern was to suggest rather than define. The billowing ruff is depicted not with polished precision but with a combination of short darts of the brush, with a few delicate touches to evoke its transparency as it rumples up around the sitter's cheek and chin. The seams, tailoring and textures of the jacket or mantle are evoked with bold, broad strokes of black, white and grey paint. These effects help to trick our eye -- we interpret the blurring as movement, and we can almost hear the rustle of the fabric as the sitter turns towards us. But Hals did use detail where it counts. The upward flick of the sitter's moustache, the four precise white highlights that glisten on his lower lip, and the strands of flattened hair that seem to stick to his forehead – as though he has just taken off his hat – are all crucial touches that help to bring his face to life.

The sitter has not been identified but his age and the year he sat for Hals (1633) are inscribed beneath the artist's monogram on the right-hand side of the painting. However, the canvas has been cut down slightly on the right edge, and the second digit of the sitter's age has been lost -- we know only that he was in his thirties. It is extremely likely that he was a citizen of Haarlem, where Hals lived and worked for most of his life. Apart from that his identity is not known.

It was once thought that this picture might be a pendant to Portrait of a Middle-Aged Woman with Hands Folded, with the suggestion that the two sitters were a married couple. But there is no concrete evidence for this and uncertainties over the original size of both paintings (the other may also have been cut down slightly) make it impossible to make a convincing argument.

Style: Baroque
This is one of Guardi's most serene paintings. The summery Venetian sky and the water of the lagoon merge almost seamlessly, broken only by a softly painted landscape and a few buildings. You can sense the tranquillity of the early morning and the warmth of the sun as it begins to rise on the horizon.

The tower of Malghera, a relic of the city's ancient fortifications that was demolished in the mid-nineteenth century, lay on the edge of the lagoon near Mestre. But the focus here is on nature and the peaceful mood, not this man-made structure. Among the expanse of blue haze are little boats with tall, spiky masts that would barely support a sail. Local fishermen go about their business -- there is little sense of sound or movement, other than that of men drawing nets in the quiet water. With a few light-handed flicks of his brush, Guardi captured the white sail of a vessel far out on the lagoon and the figures washing clothes or fishing on the strips of land that jut into the water.

Guardi created thin, almost transparent layers of paint, with feathery brushstrokes and pale tones to evoke the shimmering quality of the light. When Guardi began to paint views during the 1750s he emulated Canaletto's smooth, polished style, but soon moved to a more free-handed approach. His buildings have none of the solidity and firm outlines characteristic of Canaletto's mature style. But this composition is, in fact, taken from a loose sketch by Canaletto which Guardi has replicated closely -- he only introduced a few additional details. However, Canaletto responded very differently to this scene in his painting, depicting an up-close view of the tower suffused with a rich, golden light, and with each detail carefully observed.

Guardi was the last of the great Venetian view painters, and his influence can be traced through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Turner's romantic views of Venice are also composed mostly of sky and water, with a few incidental details to catch the viewer's eye. Guardi delighted in capturing the fluctuating effects of light in the lagoon and often revisited the same views of the city at different times of the day and during different weather conditions. This practice had a lasting impact on the paintings of Monet, particularly his views of a water-lily pond -- it's likely that Guardi's work inspired his visit to Venice in 1908.

Style: Neoclassical
Painted with Adriaen van de Velde's usual attention to the detail of texture, the animals in the picture seem almost tangible. The kid turns its head quickly, its eye and coat soft, its pose dainty and alive. The goat stands steady but alert, two long strands of dark hair lying over the pale, shaggy coat of its back. A tiny beard sprouts from beneath its chin and the horns and ears are hard and leathery.

Van de Velde frequently reused drawings of animals made from life, and the goat and kid both appear in other works by the artist. It's possible that the dark, brooding landscape background is by another artist, possibly Frederick de Moucheron (whose work is also in the National Gallery's collection -- for instance, A Landscape with Classical Ruins). The background was certainly painted after the animals, as an unpainted outline around them is visible.

Style: Baroque
A man wearing a scholar's cap and gown sits at his desk in a dark and cavernous room, a glazed expression on his face. A large book is propped up in front of him, a diagram of the palm of a hand visible on one of its pages; its subject may be palmistry, the art of supposedly interpreting a person's character or predicting their future by examining their palm. The sketch of a human skeleton pinned to the wall on the far left suggests he has an interest in anatomy, while the flask that lays on the stone floor was probably used for alchemy (the attempt to turn base metals into silver and gold). The celestial globe in the background alludes to the man's role as an astrologer.

At the time this painting was made, such interests were associated with charlatans and quack doctors. But Cornelis Bega has not adopted the caricature of the quack figure typically seen in seventeenth-century Dutch genre painting. Instead, he has depicted his sitter as a seemingly sophisticated, handsome and scholarly man. The globe is positioned like a halo behind his head, and his depiction in profile is reminiscent of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century portraiture. The man's vacant expression and withdrawn pose, with his hands clasped in his lap and his legs crossed at his ankles, create a feeling of hopelessness -- it is as if he has realised the futility of his endeavours. The disorderly array of books, papers and fabric surround him like a cocoon, while the open cupboard under his desk and the large jar with its lid askew add to the sense of neglect.

Bega painted a small series of melancholic subjects, including this one, in 1663, just a year before his death. The group included The Blind Fiddler (Ashmolean, Oxford) which depicts a blind man playing a fiddle in a tavern. The tavern setting looks similar to the room shown here. Both are cave-like, with stone floors and dark recesses framed by stone archways. Both are dimly lit, with light appearing to come from an unknown source to the left, illuminating the figures in the centre of each composition. This creates an oppressive atmosphere, and one which is especially prominent in Bega’s depiction of the astrologer.

Style: Baroque