wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
This portrait of an unknown husband and wife is unusually intimate. The costumes have been dated to the mid-1540s. It was rare at the time for a man to be depicted with his hand resting on his wife’s shoulder in such an affectionate way. It was also slightly unusual for a woman to be shown on her husband's right-hand side, which was regarded as the position of honour. The woman in Lotto's Portrait of Giovanni della Volta and his Wife and Children, painted in 1547, is also shown on her husband's right-hand side.

The couple are depicted outdoors in an area enclosed by trees. The lady is standing before a fruiting lemon tree and holding a pink carnation, which was a flower associated with betrothals and divine love. The fruitful lemon tree may symbolise her fertility. Lemon trees appear frequently in religious art of the time from Verona, such as Gerolamo dai Libri's Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, and the portrait may also have a Christian undertone.

The sitters' bodies are angled towards one another, but they do not look at each other or at us, both staring obliquely into the distance. Their lack of eye contact and unfocused gazes make them appear a little wooden. The lady appears to have been holding her gloves or a handkerchief in her other hand. The unusual dimensions and the manner in which the woman’s hand is cropped suggest that the painting may have originally been longer and has been cut down in the past.

The picture is badly damaged, so it is difficult to tell who painted it. The portrait came from a collection in Ferrara and may have been made in North Italy but perhaps by a Flemish rather than an Italian artist. The costumes are provincial from northern Italy and suggest that the painting is not Venetian.

Style: High Renaissance
We do not know the identity of this dark-haired man with his striking ginger beard, although he has been said to be an ancestor of Count Lupi of Bergamo, from whom the painting was bought in 1865. The picture is typical of Moroni's bust-length portraits of the 1560s. The sitter's body is turned at a sharp angle to us and his eyes meet ours with a direct, attentive gaze.

Moroni has used a very limited palette of colours to focus our attention on the sitter's face and to tie elements of the composition together. The black of the satin doublet and in the sitter's hair is repeated in the inscription, the ginger of his beard is echoed in the rusty veins in the marble parapet, and the green-grey background is the same colour as his eyes. Red has been used for the shadows in the ear and the nostrils, which is also characteristic of Moroni's earlier work.

As in many of Moroni's portraits, the upper edge of the picture was originally just above the sitter's head -- a three centimetre strip of canvas was added in the nineteenth century to create more space. The torso has been truncated by the addition of a marble parapet on which a Latin motto is inscribed. The composition here is a little unsatisfactory because the sitter's right shoulder does not project sufficiently and his back has an exaggerated slope. This would have been less apparent before Moroni added the parapet. The cut of the collar and jacket are similar to Moroni's half-length portrait known as the 'Poeta Sconosciuto' (Unknown Poet) dated 1560, now in the Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo, Brescia.

The parapet seems to have been an afterthought: it is painted over the clothes. As the paint has become translucent with age, it is evident that the final two words of the Latin inscription were originally written in reverse order. The inscription comes from Book IV of Virgil's Aeneid and translates as 'so long as breath controls my being'. The gods have ordained that Aeneas must leave Queen Dido but he utters these words to affirm that he will never forget his love for her. It's not known why Moroni chose to add these words to this portrait. They might be a declaration of undying love or a token of loyalty in a more general sense. They may even be an affirmation of religious faith -- they appear on a Milanese portrait medal of the same period surrounding a figure of Religion (British Museum, London). The note of the man's age as 30 (ANNOR XXX) is a later addition; we do not know on which basis it was made.

Moroni frequently included inscriptions in his paintings and similar ones appear in three of his bust portraits now in the Accademia Carrara, Bergamo. In the portrait of Paolo Vidoni Cedrelli, dated 1576, the parapet is painted on top of the sitter's clothes, as here.

Style: High Renaissance
In the Middle Ages, the Old Testament prophecy that the Messiah would spring from the family of Jesse, the father of King David, was interpreted visually as a family tree. The subject was more familiar in stained glass windows and large designs in mosaic or fresco than it was in smaller paintings.

Here, Jesse lies sleeping at the base of the tree which grows from his loins. The scene is set in a delicate rocky landscape of ghostly white buildings and golden foliage. The ancestors of Christ are shown emerging from the branches of the tree, the uppermost of which is occupied by the Virgin and Christ Child. The artist has taken pains to represent each of the ancestors as an individual with a unique pose and combination of objects. The ancestors of Christ are not represented in order of birth. They are, starting from bottom and moving left to right: Solomon (with a blue book); David (holding a sceptre); Uzziah (reading a green book);  Jehosaphat (with his head in his hand);  Rehoboam (holding a stone tablet); Jotham (with long white beard and pink cloak); Jehoram (with his hand raised); Asa (reaching towards Christ); Abijah (bending to touch a twig);  Ahaz (holding a green book and pointing downward); Hezekiah (holding a sceptre and looking up at the Virgin);  Manasseh (offering an orb).

This small picture is painted on parchment or paper, which was commonly used for manuscript illustration. The style and technique are also typical of manuscript illustration. The picture is painted in minute detail with tiny hatched and cross-hatched brushstrokes building up the depth of colour, and most of the decoration is picked out in gold. The rich blue pigment ultramarine used in the background is made from the semi-precious stone lapis lazuli and would probably have been more expensive than gold. The rich colours and gold details give the illustration a jewel-like appearance. It was clearly an expensive, precious and highly prized object. We do not know for whom it was made, or whether it was made as part of a book. The subject matter suggests that it might have been an illustration for a Bible or Book of Hours (a collection of texts, prayers and psalms for Christian devotion).

The painting was once believed to be by the miniaturist Giulio Clovio but there is no evidence to suggest this was the case. It is more likely to be a late work by Girolamo Genga, an artist from Urbino. Genga worked for several important and wealthy clients including Pandolfo Petrucci, ruler of Siena, and Guidobaldo da Montefeltro and Francesco Maria I della Rovere, both dukes of Urbino.

Style: High Renaissance
According to the Book of Exodus, the Israelites, having escaped slavery in Egypt, feared famine as they wandered the desert. When they began to complain to Moses and Aaron, God spoke to Moses: 'Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you; and the people shall go out and gather a certain rate every day, that I may prove them, whether they will walk in my law, or no' (Exodus 16: 4).

In this painting on linen canvas, a rare survival from the Renaissance, the Israelites are gathering the promised manna -- a strange, white substance tasting of wafers made with honey, which fell from the sky each morning but melted in the sun. Moses and Aaron stand on the left, overseeing their people's activity as they gather the heavenly food into pots, jars, bowls and even pinafores. This picture was probably originally in a small chapel or oratory in Ferrara, or possibly in the house of one of the Jewish community there: it was one of a group of eight similar paintings showing subjects from Genesis and Exodus, two of which are in the National Gallery's collection.

The Israelites gathering manna is a rare subject. It was depicted in fifteenth-century Northern European editions of the Biblia pauperum ('Paupers' Bible') as an Old Testament prefiguration of the Last Supper. An important precedent in Ferrara is Ercole de' Roberti's version of the scene, painted in the 1490s as part of a predella which also included The Institution of the Eucharist. Costa must have known this work, which was perhaps already in the Este collection: he was clearly inspired in particular by the setting, with the timber-frame huts with woven reed walls representing the tents which the Jews pitched in the desert.

Given the fragility of painting on linen, both this and The Dance of Miriam are in reasonable condition, although they were probably originally brighter: both are covered with surface dirt and some of the pigments, in particular the yellows and oranges, have deteriorated. A distinctive feature of both is the copious amount of finely applied gilding. Costa used shell gold to decorate not only the costumes but also the huts in the background, the foliage of the trees and other details.

Style: High Renaissance
This group of fresco fragments come from a 'street tabernacle', an open-air altarpiece placed on the walls of a building for all to see. They were once extremely common across Europe -- some can still be seen -- and were intended to encourage citizens to worship even as they went about their daily lives in the city streets. This one was situated on the street known as the Canto de' Carnesecchi in Florence, near the church of Santa Maria Maggiore.

According to the sixteenth-century writer Vasari, this tabernacle was one of Domenico's first works in Florence. The artist has signed the central section. The heads of two saints, one beardless and the other with a beard, come from two full-length figures who stood on either side of the central image of the Virgin and Child enthroned.This fresco was placed in a particularly important position on the route for religious processions in Florence. An eighteenth-century engraving shows its position: it was a prominent feature on the route between the Baptistery and Cathedral and the church of Santa Maria Novellla. This is a rare surviving example that can be viewed in a gallery: due to their outdoor location, few tabernacles survive in good condition.

The fresco was removed from the wall where it was originally painted in 1851 and restored. The bodies of the saints were apparently too damaged to be worth restoring.

This piece of public devotional art was probably commissioned by a member of the Carnesecchi family, who owned several properties in the area. The family also had two chapels in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore. Records show that the family owned a house, built in the 1430s or 1440s, with an image of the Virgin on the outside -- it became known as the 'house of the Virgin Mary'.

A decade after their removal from the wall, the frescoes were sold separately. The National Gallery's first director, Sir Charles Eastlake, bought the two heads of saints for his own private collection. They were purchased by the National Gallery in 1867, after his death. The central fragment was reunited with the the saints in 1886 when it was donated to the Gallery.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
These 12 small pictures 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. They show the 'labours of the months' -- the rural activities that take place each month throughout the year.

Each of the small scenes is painted in bright clear colours, costly ultramarine blue for the sky, strong vermilion and red lake for the clothing, with rich greens and yellows in the landscape. The restricted and repeated use of colour gives the group of little pictures a charming, decorative simplicity. All but one of the scenes show a man working outdoors on what appears to be the estate of a large villa, seen in several of the paintings, at the foot of the distant blue mountains.

The pictures are now framed in the order of the presumed months in which the activities shown take place in Italy, although we cannot be certain this is original order. The figures with bare feet probably belong to the warmer months. The cycle would have started with January, even though the Venetian year began on 1 March.

The so-called labours of the months (they are never all labours) became popular as a subject for art during the twelfth century in carvings around the doorways of Italian churches. The exhausted fruit gatherer who represents August in this cycle is also found in the carvings on the basilica of San Marco in Venice. Paintings of the months on canvas or panel were much less common than those of the four seasons.

When bought by the National Gallery in 1888, these paintings were believed to be by Bonifazio de' Pitati, a painter from Verona who settled in Venice and took over Palma Vecchio's workshop. However they are more likely to have been painted by an artist working in the style of Lodovico Pozzoserrato (Lodewyk Toeput) from Antwerp who, after a stay in Venice, settled in Treviso in the 1580s. The figures are similar to those in his canvases of the 1580s, such as The Miraculous Draught of Fishes now in the Hermitage, St Petersburg.

The pictures are currently arranged in this order:

January: A warmly dressed old man sits by a stove.

February: Trimming stakes with a hatchet.

March: Pruning the vines.

April: A cooper making a barrel

May: A young man holds two rods.

June: A labourer holds a sheaf of corn he has cut with his scythe.

July: A labourer threshes grain with a flail.

August: Exhausted from fruit picking, a labourer sleeps beneath a tree.

September: The vines are harvested and the grapes pressed.

October: The field is ploughed.

November: A hunter with his hawk and hounds.

December: Slaughtering a pig.

Style: High Renaissance
These ten panels once made up a polyptych (multi-panelled altarpiece), painted by Giorgio Schiavone between about 1456 and 1461. The centre panel, depicting the Virgin and Child enthroned, was crowned by an image of the Pietà and flanked by two rows of saints: Bernardino, Anthony of Padua, Peter Martyr and John the Baptist in full-length on the lower tier, with bust-length images of saints Jerome, Catherine, Sebastian, and an unidentified female saint in the upper tier. The altarpiece must have had an elaborate original frame, which has been lost.

The polyptych is often referred to as the San Niccolò Altarpiece, as it was painted for the funerary chapel of the wealthy Roberti family in the church of San Nicolò in Padua. Its altar was dedicated to the Franciscan missionary Bernardino of Siena, seen among the full-length saints in the lower tier. He was an important Franciscan missionary who preached across the Italian peninsula, including in Padua in 1423. He died in 1444 and was canonised in 1450, shortly before Giovanni de Roberti left funds in his will for the chapel’s construction.

The depicted saints were chosen for their special significance for members of the Roberti family. John the Baptist was the name saints of Giovanni, while his sons Antonio and Piero were represented by Anthony of Padua and Peter Martyr, who were also the patron saints of Padua. It has been suggested that the female saint with the white headdress in the upper tier might be identified as Saint Dorothy, the name saint of Giovanni’s wife Dorothea, but this remains uncertain since Dorothy is typically shown as a maiden holding a basket of flowers.

The artist’s real name was Juraj Čulinović. He has signed his name on a cartellino on the front of the Virgin’s throne: OPVS. SCLAVONI. DISIPVLI. / SQVARCIONI. S (‘the work of Sclavoni, Squarcione’s pupil’). Schiavone means ’Slavonian': he came from Dalmatia (in modern-day Croatia) but trained in Squarcione's workshop in Padua from about 1456 to 1459. He returned to Dalmatia in about but made occasional visits to Venice and Padua.

The San Niccolò Altarpiece demonstrate Schiavone’s familiarity with the work of his contemporaries. The panel of Saint John the Baptist is indebted to designs by Donatello, who worked in Padua between 1443 and 1453, while the composition of the Pietà is based on a painting attributed to Fra Filippo Lippi, who stayed in the city in the 1430s. Additionally, Schiavone's gradually shaded variations of tone and the solidity of his figures are close to the style of Andrea Mantegna, and the creased and crumpled draperies of his figures recall the paintings of Marco Zoppo. Both were similarly pupils of Squarcione. Schiavone’s style is also similar to that of Carlo Crivelli in some ways – for example, his scattering of illusionistic fruits and flowers around his paintings.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
Buildings and Figures near a River with Shipping and its companion piece Buildings and Figures near a River with Rapids date from around the mid-1730s. Both show windmills and crumbling towers, and spirited figures gathered along the water's edge on horseback and foot; both are surrounded by water -- the sea, canals and rivers were a lifeline to those living in and around Venice.

Marieschi spent his early career in Venice but we know very little about his training. He began to paint vedute (view paintings) having been encouraged by the great success of his fellow Venetian artist, Canaletto, but these scenes are distinguished from Canaletto's work by their exaggerated perspective, more atmospheric colour and loose brushstrokes. These capricci views -- works that combine fantasy elements and reality -- were likely inspired by those of Guardi, for example A Caprice with Ruins on the Seashore.

Style: Baroque, Rococo
This large, gilded polyptych (multi-panelled altarpiece) is one of the few almost complete early Renaissance altarpieces in our collection (the frame is modern). It was made for the church of San Giovanni Evangelista, in Pratovecchio, Tuscany, probably in the 1420s. This was the church for a house of nuns, making this one of the few paintings of this date we think may have been commissioned by women -- two abbesses -- for the use of women.

It probably sat on the high altar, as it shows the saint to whom the church was dedicated. In the centre panel, Saint John the Evangelist is being hauled up to heaven by Christ while scenes from his life are shown in the predella. A crowd of saints watch from the large panels on the left and right, while smaller saints stand in the pilasters. In the Middle Ages people believed that saints could intercede with God on their behalf at the Last Judgement, and the saints here are those who were important for the nuns at San Giovanni. Some of them are identified by inscriptions, although these are not original and might not all be correct.

In the pinnacles at the top are the Trinity -- God the Father holds the crucified Christ while the dove of the Holy Ghost hovers between them -- and the Annunciation, when the Virgin Mary was told by the Archangel Gabriel that she'd bear a child. On one side we see Gabriel and on the other Mary. Below this is the descent into limbo, where Christ breaks down the gates of hell and leads souls out of purgatory.

The nuns at Pratovecchio belonged to the Camaldolese Order, a small reformed monastic order founded by an Italian monk, Saint Romuald, in 1012. Although they followed the Rule of Saint Benedict, Romuald wanted them to live a stricter and more solitary life. They wore white habits and lived in individual cells, like hermits, although they came together to eat and pray. We have parts of two other altarpieces made for Camaldolese houses, one from San Benedetto fuori della Porta Pinti, Florence, and another also for Pratovecchio.

This altarpiece may well have been commissioned by two abbesses of San Giovanni, Catherine and her successor Agatha. Saint Catherine of Alexandria appears in the right-hand main panel, while the saint in the bottom left corner with the inscription 'Apollonia' might have been intended as Agatha. Often, the objects that saints hold help us identify them, but it's not clear if what she is holding is meant as a tooth or a breast (Saint Agatha was tortured by having her breasts cut off, while Apollonia had her teeth pulled out).

We do not have any documents showing exactly how this commission worked, but the artist, Giovanni dal Ponte, had a workshop in Florence, about 50km from Pratovecchio. The nuns presumably did not deal with the artist themselves, but would have been assisted by a male advisor, perhaps the prior of the local Camaldolese monastery at Poppiena; when this altarpiece was made its prior was a Florentine called Francesco, and Saint Francis appears here in the left pinnacle.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
These two female saints, Mary Magdalene and Catherine of Alexandria, are attributed to Carlo Crivelli. They almost certainly came from a polyptych (a multi-panelled altarpiece), probably made in the early 1490s, and were part of the frame or predella.

Both Mary Magdalene and Catherine were enormously popular throughout the Middle Ages so their inclusion doesn't help us to work out the altarpiece's intended location. Unusually for Crivelli, they stand in architectural niches, rather than against gilded backgrounds: they were perhaps from the predella of an altarpiece like the one from S. Francesco dei Zoccolanti, Matelica, where Saint Catherine also stands in front of a stone alcove.

Both are painted in egg tempera on poplar, the standard materials for Renaissance Italian painting. They have often been thought to be by assistants rather than Crivelli himself.

Style: Early Renaissance