wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
The young man in this portrait leans on a stone ornament, confident and at his ease. Dressed fashionably in black, with large amounts of expensive lace on show, he has a falling collar -- a relatively new trend in Holland -- and a multitude of tiny buttons down the front of his coat. His hair is also on trend with the time, with long waves and an artfully casual stray lock over one eyebrow. The black satin gleams, and the coat sleeve is slashed to display the fine silk and lace cuff of his shirt. The portrayal of the extravagant folds and creases of the sleeve is particularly eye-catching; taken in isolation, they almost make a small abstract painting on their own.

The man rests the back of a gloved hand on his hip. The second glove is held lightly between two long, elegant fingers, as if it is about to drop to the floor. We don't know who he is. His dress, his full moustache and tiny beard imply he's a man of fashion with money to spend. His florid complexion, slight paunch and sturdy legs in their satin breeches, and the suggestion of a smile, imply an enjoyment of the good life. But the falling glove may hold the smallest of clues to another side of his character. Gloves were fashionable items, but could sometimes symbolise love and friendship, or sometimes, if one is shown removed from the hand and especially if allowed to drop, could mean the end of a valued friendship or the letting go of authority. In his case, we shall probably never know.

Bartholomeus van der Helst was considered one of the leading portrait painters in Amsterdam, becoming very successful and, after a while, overtaking Rembrandt in popularity. As Rembrandt's style became looser -- and rougher and more unfinished in the eyes of the time -- van der Helst developed a much smoother, perhaps more classical, way of painting, with brushstrokes less visible.

In this portrait, van der Helst has shown his familiarity with the Flemish style made popular by Anthony Van Dyck -- the long slender fingers, the nonchalant but sophisticated pose and the fine detail of dress and features. He also placed the young man against a curtain looped back to reveal a stone wall, with the suggestion of a view of a garden outside, a device that had originated with Van Dyck. The plant close behind is quickly sketched in just one colour, with quick half circles of paint seemingly hanging in space, making it, whatever it might be, as anonymous -- but not as earth bound -- as the young man himself.

Style: Baroque
These four saints come from a large polyptych (multi-panelled altarpiece) made for the high altar of the church of San Giovanni Evangelista, in Pratovecchio, Tuscany. Their costumes and attributes -- objects they were particularly associated with, often connected with their martyrdom -- tell us who they are.

From left to right we see Saint Peter, holding the keys to heaven; Saint Romuald, with a book inscribed 'S.RUMV'; Saint Catherine of Alexandria, with her wheel and martyr's palm; and finally Saint Jerome, dressed as a cardinal, holding an open book. With the exception of Catherine, they are all looking to the left, at the ascension of Saint John the Evangelist in the central panel.

San Giovanni was the church of a Camaldolese nunnery, and the saints here are those who had a special significance to the nuns. Saint Peter was the first pope and founder of the Catholic Church; the eleventh-century Saint Romuald was the founder of the Camaldolese Order, and so appears on every Camaldolese altarpiece. Both Peter and Romuald appear on another altarpiece for the Order, made for San Benedetto fuori della Porta Pinti in Florence

Other saints had a more local significance. Saint Catherine, an early Christian virgin martyr, had refused to marry the Roman Emperor on the grounds that she was already married to Christ. Her hand prominently shows the ring, emphasising this mystic marriage towards which all nuns aspired. She was also perhaps important to the nuns at Pratovecchio as the glossary:patron saint of their abbess from 1394 to 1404, who was possibly responsible for putting the commission for the altarpiece in motion in the first place.

Regional politics seems to have influenced the inclusion of Saint Jerome. The fourth-century saint was popular in Italy as one of the Doctors of the Church and as the translator of the Bible into Latin (he also appears in Carlo Crivelli's Saint Jerome and Bono da Ferrara's Saint Jerome in a Landscape). He often held a book, a reference to his extensive writings, but here the text inscribed on it is unusual. The Latin is misspelt -- either the artist or, more likely, his adviser was not a Latin scholar -- but it can be translated as 'To do penance is to mourn sins committed and by mourning them to sin no more'. It may have been intended as a warning to the nuns of the sister house of San Benedetto in Arezzo, who were very close to those of San Giovanni: nuns were allowed to come and go between the two houses. The nuns of San Benedetto fought constantly for the right to self governance. In 1407 it had been decreed that they should remain under the control of San Giovanni, but three nuns at San Benedetto rebelled and illegally elected their own abbess. In 1412  Agata, abbess of San Giovanni, visited them and exacted an apology from the tearful sisters.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
This painting is part of Romanino's high altarpiece for S. Alessandro in Brescia, and is situated beside the main panel of the Nativity. Saint Alexander was included because he was patron saint of Brescia and the church was dedicated to him. He is given special prominence on the holy family's right-hand side and has a double halo.

Alexander was a local martyr, beheaded in Bergamo in about 303. He was said to have been a Roman soldier in the Theban legion who was killed for refusing to renounce his Christian faith. He is reported to have survived the decimation of the Theban legion (the killing of every tenth man) and to have escaped to Milan. He was condemned to be beheaded but his executioner's arms went stiff. Alexander escaped to Bergamo where he became a preacher and converted many people in the city.

He was captured again and finally decapitated on 26 August 303 on the spot where the church of S. Alessandro is now built. Saint Alexander is often depicted as a youthful knight holding a banner marked with a fleur-de-lis in reference to the lilies that sprang up where his blood was spilled. In the central panel of Romanino's altarpiece, the Virgin Mary wears a mantle embroidered with golden fleur-de-lis -- Saint Alexander's symbol.

The jacket Alexander wears over his armour would originally have been half yellow and half blue but the blue pigment smalt has faded to grey. Parti-colour (clothes that were cut from different coloured cloths) such as this was associated with livery, and other examples can be found in Brescian painting of this date. The armour is characteristic of the time and can be dated not earlier than the 1520s. It is very close in style to that worn by Saint Demetrius in Ortolano's altarpiece, Saints Sebastian, Roch and Demetrius, of about 1520.

The heroic and richly coloured figure of Saint Alexander expresses the strongly Venetian character of Romanino's work.

Style: High Renaissance
The 12 small pictures in this group show the 'labours of the months' -- the rural activities that take place each month throughout the year. They were painted on canvas and then each glued to a wooden panel. It is possible that they were made to decorate the recessed panels of a pair of doors. The paintings seem to have been planned in pairs with the figures facing each other and are currently displayed in two frames in groups of six.

A young huntsman in a red cap and jacket holds the leashes of his two hounds. A hunting horn is tied from a cord at his waist. He looks at his hawk, which perches on his hand. In other cycles of the labours of the months, hawking and falconry are associated with courtly love and the months of April and May. Here, hunting has been ascribed as a winter activity to November.

Style: High Renaissance
A naked woman reclines on a luxurious bed, a small pink snake wriggling through her fingers. This is Cleopatra, the last Ptolemaic queen of Egypt, encouraging an asp to bite and poison her – according to some accounts, the cause of her death. Famous for her beauty and her love affairs with the Roman generals Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, she died in 30 BC after the defeat of her and Mark Antony's forces by Octavian, the future Roman emperor.

This painting was once circular and surrounded by a black painted border (parts survive at the lower right) which has been rather clumsily sawn off, removing parts of the painting with it. It's painted on poplar -- used in Italy and occasionally in France, mainly in Provence -- with a gesso ground. The picture's appearance is distorted by discoloured and degraded varnishes. There are large losses of paint in the window sill, the hair above Cleopatra's left eye and the carving on the bed, where the horse in the centre is almost entirely a restorer's reconstruction.

Working out who made this painting is made difficult by the fact that the artist was a poor draughtsman and an incompetent painter, but seems to have been copying the work of a more skilful and imaginative artist. Cleopatra is very strangely proportioned. She has a small head and feet but a massively wide abdomen, and her knees and calves are malformed. Her ear, arms and hands are simply badly drawn and the artist has badly mismanaged the foreshortening of her left foot. But the way the figure is posed within the circle is clever. So we are looking for two artists: the more able one who designed the composition and the very much less able one who actually painted this picture.

There is a strong stylistic resemblance between this painting and pictures executed at Avignon by Simon de Mailly (de Châlons). The poor drawing, the shaky knowledge of perspective and anatomy, the simplified and misplaced ear, and the vastly oversimplified modelling are all found in other works by this painter. Both this and his Holy Kindred (Musée Calvet, Avignon) are painted on a poplar support. De Mailly is known for creating paintings that are pastiches based on works by Michelangelo, Raphael and his pupils, and others. He seems to have had access to a large collection of drawings brought back from Rome by Henri Guigues, with whom he worked. He may have found the composition that inspired this one among Guigues' copies, and that composition may have been created by one of Raphael's assistants.

This painting may have been produced in the 1540s -- at about the same time as Holy Kindred -- and may have formed part of a series of famous women or subjects from ancient history.

Style: High Renaissance
This modello, or detailed oil study, is one of a group of 12 -- ten of which are in the National Gallery -- that Giordano made in preparation for the ceiling frescoes in the Palazzo Medici Riccardi in Florence in 1682--85. The overall theme of the highly elaborate, showpiece frescoes is the progress of Mankind by means of Wisdom and Virtue. This scene corresponds to that painted on one of two short walls of the grand Galleria, above the entrance doors and directly opposite The Cave of Eternity.

Despite its current title, this scene is as much focused on a celebration of Minerva’s association with the virtues of hard work and diligence as on her role as protector of the arts and sciences. Minerva, who is the goddess of wisdom, is the figure in the centre of the painting, spotlit in a mountainous landscape. She is accompanied by the messenger god, Mercury, who hovers at her shoulder. Minerva is shown entrusting the key of knowledge to a seated figure representing Intellect, beside whom kneels naked Truth. With her other hand, and in her parallel role as goddess of the crafts, she gives a hammer to Craftsmanship (Artificio) and, behind him, Industry. At their feet, alongside Minerva’s shield and spear, lie a spade and pick, symbols of hard work and construction, as well as a wooden box -- a hive, alluding to the industry of bees.

On the left of the painting a she-wolf stands over two babies -- these are Romulus and Remus on the banks of the Tiber. According to legend, the twins were abandoned to die by the river but, suckled by the wolf, they survived. Romulus went on to found Rome. The figure sitting on the rock in the background playing the viol is probably the god Amphion, who appears in Homer's Iliad and several other Greek legends. He was associated with ethereally beautiful music, and here his playing is so sweet that he has attracted a flock of birds; he even seems to have drawn the attention of the wolf. Just as Romulus was the founder of Rome, Amphion (and his brother Zethos) were known as the founders and builders of Thebes, one of the most prominent Greek cities in ancient literature. In this scene, Giordano seems to be evoking the founding of Rome and Thebes as ultimate examples of industry and craftsmanship.

Style: Baroque, Academic
A path leads across a grassy meadow to a church. To the left a figure in a red cap pastures two cows, and several chickens or ducks are scattered in the grass. To the right of an archway a waggon stands against the wall, its wheel picked out in a bluish-grey paint.

The church is the Norman church at Arbonne (now Arbonne-la-Forêt), a village to the southwest of Barbizon. The village of Barbizon, around 40 miles south of Paris, and the neighbouring forest of Fontainebleau were popular locations for artists, including Jean-François Millet (who settled there in 1849), Corot and several of the Impressionists, from around 1830 to 1870.

This picture was painted by Millet’s son, François Millet, who also made a preliminary drawing of the scene on blue paper. The signature and a written paper fragment on the back of the picture confirms this attribution. A pupil of his father, François emulated the elder Millet’s subject-matter, specialising in genre, landscape, still life and portraits.  This particular image is indebted to Jean-François Millet’s Church at Gréville (between 1871 and 1874, Musée d’Orsay, Paris), a view of the church in Normandy which Millet had attended as a child.  François Millet painted a copy of his father’s work (also dated to between 1871 and 1874), and this work was perhaps painted at the same period as a response. Both are peaceful and timeless scenes. The stately edifice set against an expressive sky in The Church at Arbonne echoes that in Jean-François Millet’s painting. He has also used similar brushwork of small touches of paint to evoke sunlight falling on stonework.

X-radiography has revealed another picture underneath, possibly a vertical landscape with a large tree just above the present church tower. This was probably painted by the same artist, who turned the canvas 90 degrees clockwise to create a horizontal format.

Style: Barbizon
In this chaotic woodland party, men and women dance, drink, play music and behave badly. They gather around a statue of a red-faced satyr with horns that may represent Pan, Greek god of shepherds and herdsmen, or Priapus, god of gardens. Pan's attributes are the shepherd's crook and musical pipes, which we see here in the foreground. Priapus is often shown wearing the floral garlands that adorn this statue, and with exposed genitalia that represent fertility.

Pan and Priapus were followers of the mischievous god of wine Bacchus. This scene celebrates the popular Roman pagan tradition of Bacchanalian festivals that were devoted to Bacchus and aimed to ensure a good harvest. According to literary accounts these wild parties and banquets involved lots of sex and alcohol. Animals, like the ones we see here, were often sacrificed during these events and the garlands of flowers were made as offerings. These naughty partygoers look like actors on a stage, partly due to the frieze-like arrangement of figures. The musical instruments and masks in the foreground allude to the festivals' dramatic plays. The figures' animated gestures and expressions invite us to join the party. The warmth of this scene is conveyed by the dusky sky and colourful draperies, now faded although once vibrant.

This picture shows Poussin's interest in Classical antiquity: the muscular figures and flowing drapery recall ancient statues, and the foreground vases are inspired by painted Greek pottery. The tranquil landscape with distant blue mountains may represent Pan's native land of Arcadia in Greece.

Poussin drew upon the art he studied in Rome: his most important patron, Cassiano dal Pozzo, owned drawings of an ancient stone sarcophagus decorated with images of Pan in the Villa Doria-Pamphili in Rome. Here, the people and trees evenly placed across the painting imitate images on ancient relief sculpture. Poussin's composition is also inspired by the work of Renaissance artists, such as Bellini's The Feast of the Gods (National Gallery of Art, Washington) and Titian's The Andrians (Prado, Madrid).

This painting was commissioned in 1636 by Cardinal de Richelieu (1585--1642), the powerful French minister, for his château in Poitou. Its companions, The Triumph of Bacchus (now in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City) and The Triumph of Silenus (also in the National Gallery) were painted at around the same time and hung in the same room, the Cabinet du Roi. At some point before 1741 all three bacchanalian scenes were replaced with copies (now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Tours) and taken to England.

Style: Baroque, Academic
This painting is a companion piece to A River Scene, with a Hut on an Island, which is exactly the same size and depicts a similar horizon and arrangement of boats, but, as the title suggests, includes an island in the middle ground.

The two are similar, but there are many subtle differences between them. The other painting depicts a scene at high water, whereas here it is clearly at or near low tide. The mudflats, still glistening wet, are exposed; the withies -- the slender stems of willow that have been put in place to mark the position of the mudbank when it is covered by the tide -- are temporarily redundant. And while the light in A River Scene, with a Hut on an Island is clear and relatively bright, there is a flatter greyness to this scene. The short, sideways brush marks in the sky suggest drizzle is in the air.

The three boats are in similar positions in each picture, but while they are underway in the other painting, here they are stationary, or nearly so. In the foreground, the fishermen in an open boat haul in their net, either to see what has been caught in the last tide or to pay it out ready for the next. It may be that they are working in tandem with the other small boat -- the line of the net certainly suggests so. The larger boat, pointing directly away from the viewer, has either been grounded or anchored in the shallow water by the mudbank. Its crew has let one of its sails fly and released the boom of the other to stall its progress. They are gathered at the bow, looking intently down into the water. Perhaps they too are handling a net, or perhaps they have run aground accidentally.

Although the clouds billow high above, filling most of the picture space, the attention of all the figures in this painting seems to be focused on the sea. Van Goyen seems to be reminding us that, for all the grandeur of the natural world, it is only by careful attention to details that we prosper -- but he is also pointing out what we miss if our eyes always remain downcast.

Style: Baroque
An angelic young woman -- the personification of Beauty -- has caught the attention of two figures. Time, the winged man holding an hourglass, points towards her and orders his companion, Old Age, to disfigure her face. Beauty recoils as the old woman lunges towards her. This interaction encourages us to consider the brevity of youth and the inevitable passing of time.

The subject is an unusual one for an eighteenth-century painting, but the figure of Time does appear in other allegorical subjects by Batoni, as well as those by other artists during this period, like Giovanni Battista Tiepolo's An Allegory with Venus and Time and Jean-François de Troy's Time unveiling Truth.

Batoni often drew from a live model when preparing his paintings: perhaps the sharply foreshortened face of the balding and bearded Time, and the wrinkled complexion and leathery, tanned skin of Old Age were inspired by the models who sat to him. He was also inspired by the work of seventeenth-century artists. Marcantonio Raimondi's print of the Judgement of Paris (about 1610--20) was the source for the figure of Time, whose pose reverses that of Paris. The figure of Beauty adapts the pose of François Duquesnoy's statue of Saint Susannah (1629) in the church of San Maria di Loreto, Rome. The figures in these works of art and in Batoni's painting are based on the study of classical statues, which were in plentiful supply in Rome: the figure of Time has an idealised body and his wings seem to emulate the soft texture of feathers and the hard stone of a sculpture. A strong light illuminates Beauty's pale face and emphasises the darker skin of Time and Old Age, as well as the rich colours of the figures' robes. This lighting contrasts with their shadowy, cave-like surroundings and the softer, failing light covering the landscape beyond.

This work and its pendant An Allegory of Lasciviousness (State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg) were commissioned by the collector Bartolomeo Talenti, one of several noblemen from Lucca who supported Batoni's early career during the early 1740s. The commission is first referred to in a letter of 4 July 1744 from Batoni to the patron, and the painting is signed and dated on the rock on the right: P.B. 1746. An old collection inventory number can be seen in the bottom right-hand corner of the canvas -- this was added in 1798, when the painting was acquired by the Russian prince Alexander Andréevitch Besborodko.

As his career progressed, Batoni continued to paint religious and allegorical subjects. He became one of the most sought after portraitists in eighteenth-century Rome and was commissioned mostly by Grand Tourists travelling in Italy, producing work such as Portrait of Richard Miles and Portrait of John Scott (?) of Banks Fee.

Style: Baroque, Rococo
This elegant and rather haughty young man in Renaissance clothing is in fact an early Christian martyr, Saint Sebastian. He was a Roman soldier who secretly converted to Christianity and was executed for his faith by the Roman Emperor Diocletian.

This panel formed part of the upper level of a large polyptych (multi-panelled altarpiece). It was painted between about 1456 and 1461 by Giorgio Schiavone for the funerary chapel of the wealthy Roberti family in the church of San Nicolò in Padua.

Sebastian holds an arrow, alluding to his legend. When the saint’s faith was discovered, he was shot full of arrows (which you can see depicted in The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian by Antonio del Pollaiuolo) but this failed to kill him. When he had recovered, he reproached the Emperor for his persecution of Christians. The astonished Diocletian, who thought Sebastian dead, had him beaten to death and his body thrown into the great sewer at Rome.

The saint later became very popular as he was believed to give protection from the Black Death, repeated waves of which ravaged Italy in the fifteenth century. The black swellings of the plague were thought to be like his arrow wounds, from which he recovered.

Most images of Saint Sebastian show his martyrdom, with his almost naked body shot full of arrows (look at Bernardino Zaganelli's version or the one by Matteo di Giovanni). Sometimes, however, he was shown clothed in contemporary dress, as here and in La Madonna della Rondine (The Madonna of the Swallow) by Carlo Crivelli. As a military commander – he was a captain in the Praetorian Guard – he was admired by the Italian elite. Even urban patricians, who were not soldiers, saw him as an exemplification of the chivalric ideal.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance