wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
Mars, the god of war, is presented with a choice as he marches away from the temple of Janus, the two-headed god who presided over war and peace. Should he continue forward into war, or should he show mercy and retreat? Figures representing different aspects of war and peace surround Mars, encouraging him to follow their example.

Alecto, one of the three goddesses of vengeance (known as the Furies), pulls Mars onwards. She urges him on with crazed eyes and holds a fiery torch to light the way in the advancing darkness. In contrast, Mars’ beautiful lover Venus, the goddess of love, is illuminated with clear sunlight. She attempts to restrain him by grasping his muscular arm. Mars turns his head to look at her, tempted by her great beauty, but the rest of his body stays firm and his sword and shield are thrust forcefully onwards.

On the left of the scene, a dishevelled woman symbolising Europe throws her arms up in distress at the prospect of war, her eyes sore from crying. Below, a child struggles to carry the abandoned orb of rule, representing her lost authority. Three more nude children encourage Venus, including golden-haired, winged Cupid, identified by the arrows at his feet, and baby Asclepius, god of healing, identified by the symbol for medicine: a rod with a snake twisted round it. Together, the young children represent the innocent who would flourish in peacetime, but will be vulnerable to the dangers that war brings.

On the right side of the painting, the realities of war are laid bare: the monsters of Plague and Famine bring a black cloud into the sky, and in the distance raging fires appear to burn. Under them writhe a cowering mass of bodies representing the joys of peacetime -- Harmony, Fecundity, Maternity and Charity. Harmony, represented by a woman with an overturned lute and an unravelling pearl headdress, looks anxiously up at the advancing Mars, as does Maternity, who clutches her baby, Fecundity. Charity, represented by an old man, has toppled over in the disorder. Between Venus’ and Mars' legs we can see that one victim of war has already been trampled to death. The god's foot crushes an open book, signifying that the written word of the law -- both temporal or spiritual -- is disregarded in wartime, just as learning and the liberal arts are stifled.

Yet, despite the artist’s convincing illustration of the horrors of war, contemporary viewers would have known that war is in Mars' nature, and that even the tempting persuasions of his lover, Venus, will not be enough to stop him. Having already prayed at the Temple of Janus, it seems his mind is made up.

This is a reduced copy after a painting by Rubens now in the Palazzo Pitti in Florence. It follows an earlier picture Rubens painted on the subject of peace and war, now in the National Gallery's collection, which has an altogether more positive outcome than the present work: Minerva protects Pax from Mars.

Style: Baroque
The composition derives from a print of 1624 by Paulus Pontius, made after a portrait of the same date by Rubens of Prince Vladislav Sigismond, later King of Poland. We can tell that the artist has used the print as a source because some of the details -- as on the hilt of the sword -- are slightly different from the painting by Rubens.

The artist copied the posture of the body and many details of the clothing from the print, but placed a different head on the sitter’s shoulders. The sitter here is unknown. The coat of arms is of the Waha family of the Southern Netherlands but it and the inscription are later additions and not necessarily connected with the portrait.

The painting was attributed first to Rubens and then to Jacob Jordaens. Now it is thought to be by an unknown Flemish contemporary who was influenced by Rubens.

Style: Baroque
Pictures of mysterious characters dressed in exotic clothing against a background of dangerously steep mountains and distant castles were very popular in seventeenth-century Flanders. The idea of the romantic wanderer caught the imagination, and inspired attractive narrative paintings that were open to interpretation.

Here, a group of nomads have stopped to rest on a bleak mountainside; one of them reads the palm of a passing peasant. We are left wondering if the little boy in the purple jacket is with the peasant or the fortune teller, and what he's doing.  A second man already disappears over the brow of the pathway, perhaps keen to avoid such interruption to his journey.

The painting is probably an early work by the highly successful genre painter David Teniers the Younger. It was later used as a design for a tapestry by J. van Bortch, in which the figures are seen in reverse.

Style: Baroque
This idyllic Italian garden with its elegant figures, classical sculptures and tall, slender Mediterranean trees is a product of Frederick de Moucheron’s imagination. As far as we know he had never visited Italy, but the picture is probably based on drawings and sketches by artists who had.

Dutch garden design at this time was much more formal than what we see in this painting: de Moucheron gives the impression of a tamed area that has been hewn out of a much wilder landscape. It’s a small oasis in a forest of trees, including tall cypresses and a Roman pine. The hillside rises on the right, untamed, behind the garden, and on the left a stone balustrade indicates steps that lead down into a valley.

Two life-sized sculptures of Roman goddesses stand on plinths. One of them wears a toga, its carved folds caught by the evening sun. Between them is an orange tree in a stone tub; below is a stone bath, spilling water on to the ground from a pipe in its side. Further to the left is a fountain and beyond it, just visible among the foliage of the woods, is the upper story of a great house. Perhaps the garden belongs to this house and perhaps the elegant figures have come from there.

The people strolling and sitting near the fountain are dressed in clothes fashionable in Holland in the 1660s. Two young peasant women come running up from where the hillside drops away, their white scarves and aprons sparkling in the sun; one waves across to two aristocratic men who idle at the foot of the sculptures. One of the men points at them while looking at his companion. A third man leans over the stone bath, displaying his splendid bright blue breeches and stockings. We don't know what story this tells -- but part of the delight in owning the picture would have been in interpreting and reinterpreting what was going on.

The figures in the painting are the work of Adriaen van de Velde, who frequently painted figures for de Moucheron, and show minute detail of costume, character and activity that brings the atmospheric background to life. At the time it was common for one artist to paint figures for another, not just in Holland but in other European countries as well -- it didn't diminish the quality or value of the painting, but enhanced it.

Style: Baroque
This view is of the Piazzetta, an area between the Piazza San Marco and the waterfront (known as the Molo). Elegantly dressed Venetians and foreign visitors – like the trio at the bottom right – mill around the square, while government officials in black robes emerge from the Doge's Palace.

Beyond, we see the basilica of San Marco, its slender campanile (bell tower) to the left. The white building on the left is the library; people gather along the colonnade below. The lines of white stone laid across the square mark out the position of temporary market stalls, like those covered with parasols in the distance.

This copy was probably made by one of Canaletto's pupils and is based on a drawing from which he prepared his own pictures. A sketch of a similar view is in the Royal Collection at Windsor. Canaletto painted this composition several times; examples are now at Woburn Abbey and the Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena.

Style: Baroque, Rococo
A woman with blue eyes and brown hair kneels at a prayer desk on which is an open book. She wears a black dress, trimmed and lined with brown fur. Her purplish underdress shows at the neckline and is ornamented with a round brooch; under that she wears a transparent chemise decorated in black. Her sleeves and underskirt are pinkish red. She wears rings, and a string of beads hangs from her belt.

We don't know who she is, but she is on the front of the right wing of a triptych (a painting in three parts). Her clothes are in the style of the mid-1520s, and she was once identified by a coat of arms -- of which little now remains -- on the side of her prayer desk.  Her husband faces her from the left wing. He was possibly a member of the Bollis family of Sint-Truiden.

In the landscape behind her, Christ rises into the sky. Below him, in a rocky landscape, are three of the soldiers who guarded his tomb: two recoil in terror, while the third sleeps. This is the Resurrection, a continuation of the narrative from the Crucifixion in the central panel.

The style of the triptych links it with the work of Bernaert van Orley and his pupil  Pieter Coecke van Aalst, both of whom also included secondary narratives in the backgrounds of their paintings. The painting on the inner wings is comparable to that of a triptych of the Lamentation painted by van Orley during the 1520s for Philippe Haneton (Royal Museums of Fine Arts, Brussels), and with Coecke's triptych for Paul Robyns, apparently painted in the 1530s. The artist of our painting was much less gifted than van Orley or Coecke, however: the donors' faces are badly foreshortened, and their hands are too large, inelegantly posed and inaccurately drawn.

Technical analysis has revealed extensive underdrawing in the wings, and where the paint has become thin this is visible to the naked eye. The underdrawing is confident, rapid and sketchy, and has been quite carefully followed for the donor figures. It gives only an approximation of the landscape and the prayer desks, however. The underdrawing of the background is so sketchy that is it impossible to tell whether the narrative scenes were suggested at all. The Resurrection was painted on top of the landscape.

Style: High Renaissance
The sumptuous silks worn by the woman in this painting distract from its actual subject. You might identify this as a portrait of a seventeenth-century noblewoman, until you notice the sword in her lowered right hand. The richly dressed figure is in fact Judith, the hero of one of the Old Testament’s deuterocanonical books, although it might be a portrait of a young woman in her guise.

The Book of Judith (13: 6--10) recounts the narrative pictured in the shadows of van der Neer’s small painting, as it unfolds on the right side: Judith seduced the Assyrian general Holofernes after a lavish banquet and waited for him to pass out in a drunken slumber. She instructed her maid to wait outside the tent where she and Holofernes would spend the night, then, at the right moment, took the general’s sword, which hung from the bedpost. Exclaiming ‘Give me strength today, O Lord God of Israel’, she struck Holofernes’ neck twice, cutting off his head. The maid was given the decapitated head and placed it in her food bag.

Van der Neer’s depiction of the climax of this violent episode is surprisingly bloodless. The maid’s downturned head is partly visible in the shadows behind Judith’s left arm. The group is apparently not inside a tent: behind the maid is a space that looks like a church interior, with a column and a stained-glass window visible. Below Judith’s arm, the lifeless head -- dangling from its hair -- is about to be lowered into a sack. Almost hidden from view is Holofernes’ headless body, lying on the bed in the left background.

Judith’s heroic act saved the Israelites from the troops of the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar, and the episodes related to Holofernes became a favourite subject to many artists, especially from the fifteenth century onward. But for van der Neer, the Old Testament story seems to have been of secondary importance. His primary aim in this picture seems to have been the rendering of materials, in which he was an expert. Silks, brocade, velvet, metalwork and pearls take centre stage, and the artist paid special attention to Judith’s dress and Holofernes’ feathered helmet on the table beside her. If this is indeed a portrait, the sitter clearly wanted to show off her material possessions.

Van der Neer’s models in portraying materials realistically were the paintings of his countrymen Gerard ter Borch and Frans van Mieris, and less so his father and teacher, the landscape painter Aert van der Neer. Eglon’s versatility and skill would ultimately lead to an appointment as court painter under Johann Wilhelm II, Elector Palatine, in 1698, about two decades after he painted this picture.

Style: Baroque
Michelangelo painted a panel picture of Leda and the swan for Alfonso I d’Este, Duke of Ferrara. The Duke had recently received the Worship of Venus (Prado, Madrid), Bacchus and Ariadne, and the Bacchanal of the Andrians (Prado, Madrid) from Titian. In accepting the commission, Michelangelo was competing directly with Titian, and he completed the painting by October 1530. The exact size of the painting is not known but Condivi, Michelangelo’s later biographer, says it was very large.

However, after falling out with the Duke’s representative, Michelangelo gave both the painting and its cartoon to his pupil, Antonio Mini, who took them with him to France. Neither the cartoon nor the painting survived, although we know the composition from a detailed engraving by Cornelis Bos. Only one detailed study by Michelangelo survives -- a drawing in red chalk of a youth’s head bending forwards (Casa Buonarotti, Florence), which appears to be about half the size of the original painting.

The National Gallery’s picture is an old copy, made after the original painting or its cartoon, and is very badly damaged in places. In it we see the Greek god Zeus in the form of a swan seducing Leda. According to legend, Leda bore Helen and Polydeuces, children of Zeus, and, at the same time, Castor and Clytemnestra, the children of her husband Tyndareus, King of Sparta. The hatchlings Castor and Polydeuces were included in Michelangelo's original composition. Leda's pose seems to derive from sarcophagus reliefs and gems, and is similar to that of Michelangelo’s marble Night (Medici Chapel, Florence) completed in 1531.

Titian's Danäe (Capodimonte, Naples) appears to have been made in response to Michelangelo’s Leda. Where Michelangelo’s Leda seems akin to a hard-edged marble relief sculpture, Titian’s Danäe is meltingly voluptuous, emphasising colour and light. Michelangelo saw the Danäe in Rome in 1545, praising its colouring, naturalness and power to entrance but criticising the draughtsmanship.

It is possible that the National Gallery’s painting may be a copy made from Michelangelo’s original cartoon by Rosso Fiorentino; the Italian patron of the arts, Cassiano del Pozzo, on his visit to Fontainebleau in 1625 spoke of a Leda there by Rosso painted after a drawing by Michelangelo. At the end of the seventeenth century it was said that the original was burnt by Des Noyers, Superintendant of Fontainebleau, on the grounds of indecency. We have no evidence whether this was the case.

When the Duke of Northumberland presented this painting to the National Gallery in 1838, he stated that it was not suitable for public exhibition. For this reason it does not appear in any National Gallery catalogue published before 1915.

Style: High Renaissance
This scene is based on a passage in the Gospel of Luke (2:22-40), which describes Mary and Joseph’s visit to the temple in Jerusalem for the rituals of Mary’s purification and of the infant Christ's presentation to God. In conformity with Jewish law, all women had to be ritually purified forty days after giving birth, while first-born sons were to be presented and redeemed by an offering to God. The priest, Simeon, is shown receiving the infant from Mary in front of an elaborate altar. The two turtle doves held by a woman at the left were brought as the sacrificial offering to secure Christ’s redemption.

Simeon was the first to recognise Christ’s divinity after the latter’s birth. Upon seeing the child, the priest said: ‘Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word: For mine eyes have seen thy salvation’ (Luke 2: 29–30). The Old Testament scenes visible on the carved stone altarpiece and on the back of Simeon’s embroidered cope underscore the theological significance of the event, as they were deemed to foreshadow Christ's Passion. The altarpiece shows Cain slaying his brother Abel, the sacrifice of Isaac, and the drunkenness of Noah, while the embroidery of Simeon’s cope depicts the Roman Emperor Augustus’s vision of the Virgin and Child during which he -- a pagan -- recognised that their spiritual power was greater than his. The small boys cast in bronze who hold up the altar may be references to pagan art, and reinforce the message of the cope by illustrating that paganism was surpassed by Judaism and Christianity.

The painting once formed part of an altarpiece made for the church of Saint Ursula in Cologne, consisting of scenes of the life of the Virgin Mary. Seven other panels are today in the collection of the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. The work was commissioned by Johann von Hirtz, an alderman and mayor of the city.

The centre panel of the altarpiece consisted of four scenes arranged in a square grid – The Presentation in the Temple appeared in the lower right. It was once thought that the altarpiece took the form of a triptych (a painting composed of three parts) but recent technical analysis has raised the possibility that the panels may have been shown individually or in a different formation to that of a triptych.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
This altarpiece was painted for the high altar of the Francesco de Strata chapel in the church of S. Paolo in Vercelli, a town in northern Italy between Milan and Turin. It was commissioned by Francesco de Strata in 1540 and is signed and dated 1543. The altar was dedicated to Saint Mary Magdalene, who appears twice in the painting.

Mary, from Magdala on the shores of Lake Galilee, was a Jewish follower of Christ, who witnessed his crucifixion, burial and resurrection. During the Middle Ages she was confused with the unnamed 'sinful woman' who anoints Jesus's feet in the Gospel of Luke (7: 36–50), resulting in the legend that she was a repentant prostitute. In Lanino’s altarpiece, she stands in the place of honour on the right-hand side of the Virgin and Child, holding the jar of perfumed ointment she used to anoint Christ’s feet. She gazes lovingly at the infant Christ, who touches an apple held by Saint Paul and seems to smile at Mary Magdalene. In the Old Testament of the Bible, the apple is a symbol of sin, referring to Adam and Eve’s expulsion from paradise. Here the apple symbolises Christ’s identity as the second Adam who has come to redeem mankind from sin.

Saint Paul holds the sword with which he was martyred and a paper with an inscription from his letter to the Romans (Romans 5: 1). Only a few words are included but the passage can be identified as: ‘Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.’ The elderly man behind Saint Paul may be the Virgin’s husband Saint Joseph. The bishop saint standing beside Mary Magdalene is Saint Gregory, who Lanino has painted with a highly individual lined and wrinkled face.

Mary Madgalene is included again as one of the tiny figures in the middle distance. Christ appears to her as a gardener, holding a large spade, on the morning after his Resurrection. She reaches out her hand in wonder but he tells her not to touch him ('noli me tangere' in Latin) (John 20: 14--18). The altarpiece originally had a lower section, known as a predella, depicting six events from the life and conversion of Saint Mary Magdalene, but its present whereabouts is unknown.

Lanino may have been the pupil of Gaudenzio Ferrari, then the most important painter in Vercelli. Between 1540 and 1560 Lanino made several trips to Milan where he became influenced by the chiaroscuro (meaning ‘light and dark’) effects in the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci. Here the fantastical rocky landscape, the facial types of the women and child, as well as the soft smoky quality of the brushwork and the strong contrasts of light and dark are all elements derived from the work of Leonardo.

Style: High Renaissance
Pintoricchio painted a number of images of the Virgin and Child of a similar size to this one. Their scale, high level of detail and decoration, and the sweetness of the figures made them highly desirable as beautiful objects and as aids for worship in the home.

This one offers a view through an arched stone window into the world of the holy figures -- a wild and expansive landscape of rocky precipices, slender trees and a distant mountain range. Christ is supported by his mother, who bows her head towards him as she delicately grasps his elbow. As a painting made for worship within the household, this was not only an object of devotion but also an example of ideal motherhood and womanhood. The Virgin's gentle downcast gaze is a sign of her modesty and humility, essential virtues for any Renaissance woman.

The Christ Child, on the other hand, looks directly at the viewer, signalling to them that they must pay attention to his gestures.  With one hand he lifts his robes to reveal his genitals -- a sign of his true humanity -- proof that he was a child just like those of the woman who would pray before this image. With his other hand, he makes a blessing gesture -- a reminder that despite his humanity he had divine authority from God.

Christ stands on a woven rug; luxury items in the Renaissance, they were never placed on the floor but used as decoration for tables, for example. It is included to show the status of the Virgin and Child but probably also to enrich the decoration of the patron's home, standing in for the real thing. Although Pintoricchio and his studio produced many works like this, the patrons of this image clearly asked him to personalise it for them by including their coat of arms. As it pokes over the window ledge, it broaches the divide between our world and that of the holy figures. Unfortunately, we do not know to which family these arms belong.

The painting was cut down at the top before it joined our collection -- the arch would have continued at the top. Parts of the image were also repainted before the National Gallery acquired it.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance