wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
This half-length figure of a saint comes from a large polyptych which Crivelli painted in 1476 for the high altar of the church of San Domenico, in Ascoli Piceno in the Italian Marche. This is Saint Stephen, Christianity's first martyr.

Potato-like rocks -- representing those with which he was stoned to death -- balance precariously on his head and shoulders. He holds his cactus-like martyr's palm in one hand, and a bound book, representing the Gospels, in the other. Crivelli has rotated the book so that we see its gilded fore-edges and the clasp holding it shut, while its white-covered binding and gilded studs are dramatically foreshortened. Stephen's smooth and youthful features contrast strongly with the powerful face of Saint Thomas now next to him.

According to his legend, Stephen was a Greek Jew who converted early to Christianity. He was such an effective preacher that the Roman authorities became concerned, and put him on trial for blasphemy. At his trial he accused the Jews of murdering Christ, and was dragged into the streets of Jerusalem and stoned to death.

Stephen was a deacon of the early Church, and so was always shown dressed as a deacon, albeit a fifteenth-century Italian one. He wears a dalmatic (an ankle length, sleeved, outer garment made from silk) with wide strips of embroidery around the cuffs and two large square panels -- orphreys -- back and front just below the neck. The luscious pink sleeves are lined with green, picking up on the colours of the Virgin's robe in the centre panel. On either side of the orphrey are two large tassels made of raised pastiglia.

For the Dominicans who commissioned the altarpiece, Stephen was an example of preaching and teaching the faith: alone of the saints in the upper tier, he gazes outwards, summoning the friars in the choir stalls to follow his example. Stephen had a special significance in the Italian Marche, as one of the rocks with which he was stoned was venerated as a relic in the cathedral of Ancona.

Style: Early Renaissance
Aelbert Cuyp did paint some stormy scenes, but the vast majority of his landscapes are, like this one, an evocation of rural tranquillity, the countryside bathed in the warm glow of a summer afternoon. We can feel it's warm: the cowherd on the left has fallen asleep on the bank in the foreground, and the black and white dog next to him has a distinctly dozy air about it. The cattle too seem drowsy. Cuyp made a preliminary drawing for the sleeping boy on a signed sheet of studies (Rijksprentenkabinet, Amsterdam).

We're looking at a landscape in the Low Countries, probably the flatlands between Nijmegen and Cleves in the eastern part of the Netherlands, which Cuyp had visited in the early 1650s. But the golden light, and that implied heat, is more reminiscent of southern Europe than the north. It was a combination which became fashionable in Holland during the seventeenth century, when Dutch artists who had trained and worked in Italy returned home to ply their trade. Cuyp never visited Italy, but he was certainly influenced by his contemporaries who had, such as Jan Both. Cuyp made this lighting effect a trademark of his paintings.

With the warm glow also comes a sense of harmony. Man and beast are living peacefully together, the animals dutifully subservient to their masters. The cowherd and horseman also seem to chat easily, even though one -- the man riding the horse -- is probably of a significantly higher social status. He might be the cattle farmer checking on his animals, or a passing gentleman.

Either way, our viewpoint from behind these figures draws us into the picture in two subtle ways. First, it invites us to follow their gaze over the landscape, out along the diagonal line established by the angle of the standing horse, the clouds and the two flocks of birds -- a line which seems to emanate from the distant spire of the church. Secondly, we are left intrigued as to the subject of their discussion. Perhaps they are talking about something to the left of that diagonal, something just out of our sight. Or perhaps, like us, they are simply admiring the view.

The cows, of course, are oblivious to all this -- but they are important too. At the time they were highly valued as a key economic success story. They grazed happily on the damp reclaimed lowlands, and continuing improvements in breeding stock and feeding practice were increasing their productivity. Cheese and butter were not only national staples, but had become important exports. In short, cattle represented a reliable source of wealth and peaceful prosperity -- and Cuyp was famous for his ability to depict them convincingly, often using positions and profiles that he would repeat and perfect in different paintings. For example, the arrangement of the heads of the two cows standing together side-on in this picture is a near mirror image of two heads in Cuyp's A Distant View of Dordrecht, with a Milkmaid and Four Cows, and Other Figures ('The Large Dort'). The outline of the cow standing head-on on the right is also used in both paintings, though varied slightly.

Style: Baroque
In this strange little picture, Pieter Verbeeck appears to be telling us a story, though it's impossible to say what it is. A man, apparently a vagrant, sleeps under a tree with his dog. A patient horse waits for them, its rein hanging down loose close to the man's hand. Another man appears over the breast of the hill and seems to eye the group. He has a couple of scruffy dogs with him and carries a club over his shoulder.

Although the green of some of the leaves has turned blue with age, the other colours in the painting appear remarkably fresh. Verbeeck was influenced by the work of Paulus Potter and Isack van Ostade, as well as by Dutch landscape painters known as the Italianates. Many had been to Italy themselves or, like Verbeeck, knew others who had. He, like them, painted pictures full of soft, warm Mediterranean colours that proved popular with collectors.

Style: Baroque
Saint Thomas raises his finger to touch the spear wound in Christ's side, an episode known as the Incredulity of Saint Thomas, related in the Gospel of John (20: 21--29).

Saint Thomas told the other disciples that he would not believe that Christ had risen from the dead unless he touched Christ's wounds with his own hands. When Christ appeared to Thomas, he said that 'blessed are they that have not seen, and have believed' (John 20: 29). The figures are situated on a paved terrace with a parapet behind it. Thomas's finger, the kneeling donor's gaze and the parallel lines of the paving all point to the wound in Christ's side. Saint Anthony of Padua presents the donor to Christ.

The figures are set against a landscape of grassy slopes with rocky outcrops to the left and a steep hill crowned with a fortified building on the right. There are three figures at the top right in front of the buildings, two of them standing beside a well. Two travellers and a man with a heavily laden donkey wend their way up the hill towards them. On the left-hand side of the picture a hermit -- perhaps intended to represent Saint Jerome, although he did not originally have a halo -- sits at the entrance to a cave, reading a book with a Crucifix at his side. A group of hunters appears on the hill above. The horizontal format of the altarpiece is rather unusual, although Bertucci also used it for the Virgin and Child enthroned with Saints of about 1511 (now in the Pinacoteca of Faenza).

The painting was made for the church of S. Francesco in Faenza, where it originally served as an altarpiece in the chapel dedicated to Saint Anthony of Padua. On 12 May 1672 it was recorded that in the chapel to the right of the main altar was 'a painting containing our Lord Jesus Christ with the Cross, with Saint Thomas on the right and Saint Anthony of Padua on the left and above, the most Holy [Virgin] Annunciate with ornament [meaning a frame] in relief, gilded and painted in blue.' The record went on to say that an inscription below the altarpiece read 'Gabriele Calderoni, son of Gaspare, doctor in both laws, had this made to fulfil his father's bequest and out of devotion.'

The Calderoni were prominent citizens of Faenza. Gaspare Calderoni was governor of the city's fortress, which resembles the fortified building in the painting. His son Gabriele Calderoni obtained a doctorate in both canon and civil law at the University of Padua, and was elected in 1490 as one of the chief magistrates of the city. He was appointed Palatine Count and Golden Knight and also had considerable diplomatic abilities.

The Incredulity of Saint Thomas was of particular interest to the legal profession since it concerned the nature of proof, the desire for truth and the virtue of compassion. The painting's donor, Gabriele Calderoni, kneeling beside Saint Anthony of Padua, may have chosen the subject because he was an eminent lawyer. The greyish tone of the donor's flesh is caused by an unusually high proportion of black pigment in the paint.

Style: High Renaissance
A lady seated in an alcove points out a passage in a book to a young man kneeling before her. This is Rhetoric, or argument, an allegorical figure who represented one of the seven liberal arts which made up the medieval curriculum. She is one of a series of paintings made in the late 1470s by Justus of Ghent for Federico da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino; the inscription above her head gives part of one of his titles. The youth at her feet, while not a portrait in a conventional sense, may possibly represent the Duke's son, Guidobaldo, then a child.

Music comes from the same series, though not from the same panel: the boards which make up the panel of Rhetoric run vertically, while those of Music run horizontally. The perspective indicates that they were hung above eye level. The figure of Rhetoric seems to have originally appeared between images of Grammar and Dialectic (once in Berlin, but destroyed in 1945). Together the three made up the trivium, one group of the liberal arts. They were painted on a single, very large panel which was cut into segments at an unknown date. We can tell that Rhetoric was in the middle as her throne is shown directly from the front, and the perspective lines of the textile on the steps converge towards a single vanishing point.

The style of the architecture, the lettering and the clothing are all in the Italian taste and the perspectival tricks, such as objects appearing to project from the steps, are found more commonly in Italian than Netherlandish paintings. However, the rules of perspective are not accurately applied. Justus seems to have been adapting his style to suit Italian tastes, and the basic compositional scheme would have been suggested by the patron and his architect to conform to the architecture of the room.

Although the artist had a very sophisticated command of the oil technique, he seems to have had difficulty in obtaining the right materials for oil painting in Italy. The panels are poplar, the usual material for Italian painting, which is much inferior to the oak Justus would have been familiar with. It was presumably also difficult to get carefully prepared oils. The paint layer is very thin in places and gives the impression of having been applied very fast; Justus was perhaps struggling to complete a number of projects at the same time for an impatient patron. The gesso has also discoloured, probably because it contains too much glue, and the whole surface is obscured by thick, yellow-brown layers of varnishes, dirt and wax, presumably from candles in the room in which it was placed.

There are drawings in black paint on the back, apparently made before the planks were assembled into a panel: they stop at the joins. They show a nude man and parts of a horse. They were hastily done and are possibly the work of an assistant.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
The sitter looms out of this painting in a rather imposing way. She fills much more of the picture space than do the figures in most of Frans Hals's portraits -- these usually allow their subjects rather more room to breathe. However, since it was first made the picture seems to have been cut down at the sides and the bottom, amplifying the sense of the sitter’s size relative to the framing of the portrait. The impression we get today may be different to Hals's original design.

But Hals was clearly always concerned with underlining the sitter’s rather solid appearance. The pose alone does this: by setting her hands in her lap and her forearms at right angles in front of her body, Hals has created a wide base for her triangular form. And within that triangle, he has focused on broad, sweeping curves -- the roundness of her shoulders, the circular white ruff, the curling frame of her bonnet and the swell of her double chin. This sense of roundness and solidity also underpins an impression of impassive self control in the sitter. Her hands rest easily one over the other and she looks down on the viewer from a slight height. The soft light, the lack of sharp shadows and the muted palette of browny blacks and greyish white also contribute to the atmosphere of calm composure (though some of this may have been caused by the ageing of the paint).

Unfortunately we don’t know the identity of this apparently composed and collected woman. Like nearly all of Hals's subjects, she is surely a citizen of Haarlem, the town where he lived and worked for most of his professional life. Although she is not wearing -- or at least showing -- betrothal or wedding rings, past attempts to identify her have included suggestions that this may be one half of a marriage portrait. Couples typically commissioned two separate paintings to be hung together as pendants; it has even been suggested that this may be pendant to a Portrait of a Man in his Thirties or Portrait of a Man holding a Book (private collection). But there is no supporting documentation, and uncertainties over the original sizes of all three paintings also undermine such speculation (marriage pendants would have been the same size).

We also can’t be sure of the date of the picture: none is marked on the canvas. Sometimes the style of dress can be used as a dating aid, but it isn’t reliable for older sitters because -- as they might today -- some men and women continued to wear the fashions of their youth as they grew older. The costume we see here was in vogue in the early 1630s, though the large and cumbersome millstone ruff was still being worn by women in Haarlem in the mid- to late 1630s -- see Portrait of a Woman (Marie Larp?) -- and even into the 1640s.

Style: Baroque
In this enormous picture, the doge -- the elected head of the Venetian Republic -- kneels before the Virgin Mary and Christ Child, asking for her support for the Venetian state. This is painting at its most official: the doge holds a banner showing the lion of Saint Mark, the symbol of Venice, and wears ceremonial dress. The inscription on the altarpiece in the centre reads: 'Protect the city, the Venetian State and the Venetian Senate and, if I merit it, look down with favour on me, Virgin.'

It was traditional for each doge to commission a painting of himself with the Virgin and saints, to be placed in the Senate or Doge's Palace, in thanks for achieving his office (another example of such a picture is the so-called Barberigo Altarpiece by Giovanni Bellini, now in San Pietro Martire, Murano). This is Doge Giovanni Mocenigo (1478--85). The family's coat of arms is visible on the tails of the banner and on the front of the altar, and is being presented by Saint John the Baptist, his patron saint. The Mocenigo were one of the most renowned patrician families of Venice, seven of whom served as doge, and two portraits of Giovanni Mocenigo by Giovanni Bellini clearly show the same man. On his head is a distinctive horned hat, the corno ducale -- also seen in Bellini's Doge Leonardo Loredan -- made of red and gold silk over a white linen coif, with long strings tied under the chin. His mantle of red velvet cloth of gold falls in deep folds to the ground, while on his shoulders is a ceremonial ermine cape.

Immediately before him the Virgin sits in a classical stone alcove, deposited in the mountainous landscape like a monumental piece of garden furniture. On her knee a fair, curly-haired Christ raises his hand to bless the kneeling doge: Mocenigo's prayers seem to be answered. Beside him flutters a goldfinch, the bird thought to have pulled thorns from Christ's forehead at the Crucifixion, which the bird came to symbolise.

As well as invoking the Virgin's general aid, the painting might also be connected to the plague -- there were outbreaks in Venice in 1478/9 and in 1485, while Mocenigo was doge. Saint Christopher, who stands behind the Virgin, was sometimes invoked against the plague and the vase on the altar perhaps contains medicine.

The painting's condition makes it difficult to attribute securely to any particular artist, though it has been associated with Vittore Carpaccio, Lazzaro Bastiani and both Giovanni and Gentile Bellini. It may have lost something at the top -- the vase hanging in the middle was perhaps originally attached to a swag of fruit.

Style: Early Renaissance
The Virgin Mary is seated on the ground in a rocky landscape with the Christ Child on her knee. He reaches out for the flower that his mother has just picked. This way of showing the Virgin is known as the 'Madonna of Humility'.

The artist, Marco d'Oggiono, was a follower of Leonardo da Vinci. The style and composition of this painting seem to reflect models d'Oggiono had learned during his youth, when he trained in Leonardo's workshop. He must have been aware of Leonardo's Virgin with the Infant Saint John the Baptist adoring the Christ Child accompanied by an Angel, begun in the 1490s, where the Virgin similarly sits in a fantastic landscape.

Renaissance artists often made preparatory drawings or studies for paintings or parts of paintings. There’s a drawing of a woman's head in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London that is very close to the head of the Virgin here, and of a similar scale. It also has prick-marks, evidence of pouncing (a way of transferring a design from paper to another surface). But the link between the drawing and painting isn’t straightforward. Infrared reflectography shows that the artist revised the underdrawing, moving the Virgin's head: it was originally lower down, with the top of the nose roughly where the upper lip is now. The first drawn head does not seem to derive from the V&A drawing and, while the final painted version is very close to it, there are no clear signs of pouncing on the canvas.

You can see how d'Oggiono's style has developed from his earlier works, like Portrait of a Man aged 20 and Madonna of the Violets of about 1498--1500 (Collection de Navarro). He is clearly trying to imitate Leonardo's famous sfumato ('smoky') technique -- blurring the outlines of a form -- and his palette has become softer. D'Oggiono never mastered anatomy or expression, however: Christ's hands are podgy and boneless, and he looks somewhat vapid. By the time this was painted Leonardo had long left Milan, and d'Oggiono was largely working with formulas he had learnt long ago.

Style: High Renaissance
The tranquillity of the Campagna -- the countryside around Rome -- stretches far into the distance under a soft golden light. Muleteers, who lived by transporting goods on the backs of their patient mules, move at a leisurely pace across the mountainous landscape. Its paths wind in and out of rocky outcrops down to the misty valley. The fine leaves of silver birch trees make a filigree pattern against the rolling clouds, tinged almost lemon yellow from the sun.

The sun also catches the white sleeves, stockings and collars of two men as they stop for a rest and a chat in the shade close to us. One squats on a boulder. The other leans towards him, one leg hoisted up, his chin resting on his hands clasped on his stick. The tree close to us that rises up to disappear out of the picture and the dark shadows of the hillside on the right hem the two men in, so that the eye is drawn to them. Surrounded by their goats, these are the herdsmen in the title of the painting.

But Both doesn't let us linger in the shade with the herdsmen. The upward slant of the single tree and its neighbouring sapling is echoed by the diagonal line of the path. It takes us from the standing herdsman's hat up to the mule, to the tower in the distance, up to the cliff face of the hill beyond, before it runs down gently to the lake glinting in the sun. Both, who had spent three years of his youth in Rome, had made many sketches of the Italian countryside before he returned home to turn them into a series of romanticised pictures that were swept up by a Dutch audience, fascinated by scenes of a landscape and an atmosphere so different from their own.

But all is not quite as perfect as first appears. The mule behind the herdsmen carries heavy rolls hanging from a cumbersome wooden saddle. His head droops and his legs are painfully thin. His muleteer leans on a stick, struggling with the climb. Both places them against the light background of the sandy path to make sure these details can be seen.

The fastest moving thing in the picture is the waterfall tumbling down the steep hillside on the right into a rocky pool where a man drinks the fresh, sparkling water from his hat. Both makes no attempt to make him an idealised classical figure: his arms are fairly muscular, but his torso is scrawny and the muscles slack. This is no Adonis of the Roman countryside but a peasant with a hard life.

So although Both paints the countryside as a romantic ideal, his peasants are not. He makes sure that for a discerning eye, the realities of life in the Italian hills are visible. This earned him criticism from Italian artists such as Salvator Rosa, who disliked his portrayal of 'barbaric' peasants. But Claude, the great landscape painter who lived in Rome at the same time as Both, collaborated with him. His work served as an inspiration to Both during his stay in Rome and after his return to the Netherlands.

Style: Baroque