wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
These four paintings by Veronese are allegories of love. They are titled Unfaithfulness, Scorn, Respect and Happy Union, although their precise meanings remain unclear and have been much debated. The titles were given to the paintings in 1727, and continue to be used in the absence of better suggestions.

They were intended for a ceiling or a series of ceilings. We can tell this because the architectural elements within them are tilted. The lower parts of the compositions are not included in the paintings, and in several cases the feet of the figures are not visible. These features would have worked when the paintings were displayed on a ceiling but are disconcerting when they are hung on a wall. The composition of each painting forms a strong diagonal, which on a ceiling would help relate the paintings to one another.

We do not know who commissioned them, but it is most likely that the patron was Italian and they were made for a Venetian location. They seem to have still been in Italy in the 1620s, when Van Dyck recorded two of the compositions (Unfaithfulness and Respect) in his Italian sketchbook (British Museum, London). In 1648 they were in Prague Castle, although it seems most likely that the patron was Venetian.

The paintings may have been made to decorate a husband and wife's apartments as the subjects are connected with the trials and rewards of love. The scenes are not necessarily meant to go in any particular order and there is no obvious narrative development. The man in Happy Union does not appear in any of the other scenes.

It seems likely that the paintings were intended for the ceilings of a suite of four rooms rather than for a single ceiling. In each painting the light falls from the same direction, which supports this idea. Also, in Venice no private residence had a ceiling large enough for all four paintings and no ceiling with four square compartments is recorded. Since many European palaces had parallel suites of rooms for husband and wife, it is possible that two of the paintings were made for a reception room and bedchamber of a man and two for the equivalent rooms of his spouse. The series does seem to divide well into two pairs: Unfaithfulness with Happy Union; and Scorn with Respect.

It is likely that the rapidly brushed-in highlights on the figures were made in response to a final judgment of how the pictures looked when viewed from a distance and from below. That final judgment must have been Veronese’s own. The costumes and hairstyles relate to those in Veronese’s other paintings of the mid-1570s.

Style: High Renaissance
Raphael painted this altarpiece for the Ansidei family chapel dedicated to Saint Nicholas in the Servite Church of S. Fiorenzo in Perugia. The chapel had been built in 1484 by Filippo di Ansideo di Simone 'de Catrano', a wealthy wool merchant. His will of December 1490 left funds for maintaining the chapel as well as for his burial in the church.

The altarpiece would have been made up of the main panel, featuring the enthroned Virgin Mary and Christ Child flanked by Saint Nicholas on the right and Saint John the Baptist on the left, and a lower horizontal painted panel known as a predella. One of the two scenes from the predella, Saint John the Baptist preaching, is also in the National Gallery's collection. The other predella scene, which probably depicted a posthumous miracle of Saint Nicholas, is missing.

Niccolò (1469--after 1527), Filippo's eldest son, inherited his father's business interests and probably also became patron of the chapel. It was most likely he who commissioned the 22-year-old Raphael to paint the altarpiece in around 1504--5. The two saints in the altarpiece -- Nicholas and John the Baptist -- reflect his own name and that of his son Giovanni Battista. The date MDV (1505) is inscribed in gold on the hem of the Virgin's mantle. As he was from Perugia, Niccolò probably wanted to commission an altarpiece in the style of the famous local artist Perugino. His decision to employ Raphael may have been because the artist was influenced by Perugino and had probably also worked with him after his move to the city in 1502.

This type of unified single panel altarpiece, in which the enthroned Virgin and Child are accompanied by saints, is known as a sacra conversazione ('holy conversation'). It developed from the earlier style of altarpiece known as a polyptych, in which the Virgin and Child would be represented in a central panel and the saints depicted separately in individual flanking panels. Although the saints here are not literally conversing, there is a sense of quiet communion between them.

The Ansidei altar was originally located on a pier at the crossing of the church. The altar was demolished when the church underwent extensive renovations in 1768--70. Shortly before this, Raphael's altarpiece with part of the predella was sold by the monks of S. Fiorenzo to pay for the building works. The Ansidei Madonna and predella panel of Saint John the Baptist Preaching were purchased by the National Gallery in 1885.

Style: High Renaissance
This portrait is one of the two recorded by Rigaud as being painted in around 1724. Antoine Pâris (1668-1733) was the oldest of four brothers, sons of an innkeeper, all of whom became wealthy financiers during the early 18th century. Antoine held lucrative appointments in connection with the army and the royal Treasury, but he and his brothers were banished in 1726 when Cardinal Fleury became Louis XV's first minister.

The fine characterisation of the head, a hallmark of the work of Rigaud and of his contemporary, Largilliere, seems almost eclipsed by the grandeur of the setting and the bravura handling of the draperies. Antoine Pâris is shown with the grandiloquence characteristic of Rigaud's court portraits: seated in a library beside an elaborate table with the base of an immense column to one side and a vase to the other. Clutching a blue velvet drapery he turns to the right as though greeting an unseen visitor.

The painting's frame is the original.

Style: Baroque, Rococo
A strong diagonal path leads from the bottom right of this painting into the middle distance. Standing in front of this large picture it almost feels as though you could clamber down onto it, stroll past the shepherd playing his pipe and follow on the heels of the walker towards the courting couple. When you look closely at these figures, however, you realise that they are not painted to scale. The man walking is further away from us than the shepherd, so should be smaller than him, not bigger. And the two figures a little further down the road are much smaller than they should be.

It is hard to believe that a painter as skilled as Philips Koninck would have made such basic errors of scale by mistake. Instead, what he seems to be doing is experimenting with optical effects, using a deliberate strategy to try to replicate the way our eyes work when we gaze into the distance. Because we can’t focus on an entire panorama at once the eye must either relax altogether, so that everything is slightly blurred, or focus on the detail at a certain point in the distance, so that some of what we see will be clear and the rest slightly fuzzy.

As well as making the walking man in the middle ground more prominent so that he catches our eye, Koninck has painted the landscape around him in a more detailed way. At this distance, the leaves on the trees and shrubs, the sheep and the buildings are carefully articulated. In contrast, the foreground nearest us is suggested with broader brush strokes, as are the fields and buildings in the further distance. The blurring is especially noticeable on the top edge of the bank just below the middle figure. In a real view, there would be a sudden change in the depth of field at this point; if focusing beyond the bank, the top of it would inevitably blur into our peripheral vision.

It’s an innovative technique, but Koninck, who made many large paintings of extensive landscapes, also took a more conventional approach to creating a sense of the vast open space before us. Apart from that diagonal line in the foreground, little distracts the eye from the series of ripple-like horizontals formed by the hedges, fields, patches of water and distant hills. There are no vertical lines, and there is nothing to frame the edges of the panorama. Viewed from such a long, slanting angle, the horizontals seem to run towards us like a series of low waves spreading out from the long flat horizon. Meanwhile, from the same horizon, the clouds billow up towards us at a similar angle, though one which sweeps slightly across the picture from right to left.

The location of this view has not been identified and, like many landscape paintings of the time, it may well be imaginary.

Style: Baroque
Tied to a column, Christ has collapsed to the floor, a noose hanging around his neck. His limp body, tilted head and pained expression show his exhaustion and suffering. We see the moment after the Flagellation, when Christ was flogged by Roman soldiers -- the sticks and whip they used to beat him lie in the foreground.

The brutality of this assault is implied by spots and trickles of blood on Christ's body and the column, the worst being hidden in the shadows and on the frayed rope and broken twigs. The plain space and deep shadow draw our attention towards Christ, whose head lies at the centre of two diagonals, at the very heart of this composition.

It's an unusual focus: paintings often show Christ being beaten by his tormentors rather than the moment after they leave. Here Christ is accompanied by a young boy representing the Christian Soul with its Guardian Angel. The angel leans over and gently directs the boy to consider the suffering of Christ; he kneels, with his hands clasped in prayer, and gazes at him with a sorrowful expression. As Christ looks towards the boy, a ray of light radiates from his head, towards the boy's heart. The combination of Christ, the angel and the Soul is rarely seen in paintings, though a few examples can be found by seventeenth-century artists working in Seville, where Velázquez spent his early career.

In religious paintings such as Kitchen Scene with Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, Velázquez combines the everyday with a scene from the Bible. Here the subject is religious and, although Christ is accompanied by allegorical  figures, they all seem so lifelike and human, their emotions heartfelt.

During the Catholic Reformation, images of Christ tied to the column became objects of devotion, either intended for a chapel or for private contemplation. The Church taught that meditation on the Passion was necessary for salvation; worshippers were encouraged to imagine that they were present at events leading up to the Crucifixion.

Velázquez was appointed court painter in 1623, after which he made very few religious works, his time being mostly taken up with painting portraits of the royal household. This painting was probably made around 1628–9, just before Velázquez's first trip to Italy between 1629 and 1630, but it has also been dated to his Italian stay and to the period immediately following, once he had returned to Madrid. The fact that it is painted on the reddish-brown ground typical of Velázquez before his trip to Italy, suggests a date before 1629.

Style: Baroque
Although we do not know his name, we can tell a lot about Baldung Grien's mature sitter from the details of his costume. The large fur collar of his coat, the jewel on his cap and the two gold chains around his neck show off his wealth. The longer chain bears two badges: the Virgin and Child within a crescent moon and surrounded by rays, and a bird of prey and a fish facing each other.



While the badge of the Virgin and Child is not worn here with one of a swan (as it is in a portrait of a lady by an anonymous German artist that is now in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid), it is recognisable as the emblem of the Order of Our Lady of the Swan, a religious group that only admitted members of the nobility. Founded in the 1440s by the Elector Frederick II of Brandenburg, the Order was at the height of its popularity in the late fifteenth century, when this portrait was made. The other emblem is the insignia of the elite Society to the Falcon and Fish, a group that organised jousting tournaments for the noblemen based in the southern German region of Swabia.

The white semicircles to the bottom right are part of the sleeve of the man's shirt; the portrait was cut down at the bottom at some point before it entered the National Gallery's collection. When it was bought by the Gallery it included the monogram used as a signature by the celebrated German painter Albrecht Dürer, in whose studio Baldung Grien may have worked. When this was discovered to be fake it was removed. The date inscribed above the sitter's head was, however, confirmed by technical analysis to be original.

The designs of the badges are drawn in black over a gold background. Their two-dimensionality contrasts with the illusionism of the rest of the portrait, for example where Baldung Grien has applied white highlights to the strands of the man's long hair to convey its sheen or painted the natural whorls in the fur collar.

Style: High Renaissance
Charity is shown here as a woman suckling a baby with two more children by her side; the small girl on the left holds a doll. It was common to show Charity as a woman with children from the 14th century onwards.

Cranach painted the subject of Charity on several occasions; the earliest recorded dated painting is of 1529. Cranach listed two paintings with the subject of Charity in the account of his work made at Augsburg in 1552, but neither can be the present picture as they were described as being painted on canvas, not wooden panel.

Style: High Renaissance
These three saints stand on the right side of a large multi-panelled altarpiece painted in the 1420s by the Florentine artist Giovanni dal Ponte. It originally sat on the high altar of the church of San Giovanni Evangelista in Pratovecchio, Tuscany, a nunnery of the strict Camaldolese Order. Several of its panels are in our collection -- it's one of the most complete early Renaissance altarpieces that we have.

Although there is no obvious logic behind the selection of smaller scenes and figures, some of the saints might reflect local concerns or have connections with neighbouring Camaldolese houses. In the roundel at the top is Nicholas, bishop of Myra in the fourth century, an enormously popular saint. He holds three gold balls, his glossary:attribute: he was supposed to have given three bags of gold to three girls as their marriage dowries, to save them from prostitution. The abbess of San Giovanni was responsible for electing the rector of the church of San Niccolo in Montemezzano.

The figure below is labelled Damian. Saint Damain was an early Christian martyr and the pair of Saint Cosmas on the left pilaster. Both wear the red outfit of a medieval doctor and carry a martyr's palm. They have no very obvious connection with the Camaldolese Order, although they were very important in Florence where their cult was patronised by the Medici, the city's ruling family.

At the bottom is Saint Margaret emerging out of the bleeding body of a dragon. Margaret of Antioch was a very popular -- and possibly entirely fictional -- saint. Like Saint Catherine, she was an early Christian virgin martyr who refused to marry a pagan. She was subsequently tortured, and swallowed by a dragon which then burst. She may well have been included here in reference to the Camaldolese house of Santa Margherita in Tosina.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
This painting shows an idealised view of peasant life in Oudewater, a small town on the River Ijssel situated between Gouda and Utrecht. Koekkoek painted several scenes of different areas of the town, and this one gives a view of the lock on the river and a barge loaded with fresh straw. People stroll around or stand and chat, while one man attempts to fish in the river with a makeshift rod. Although the majority of Koekkoek’s scenes are imagined views, he does include topographically accurate details: in this picture he has depicted the clock tower of the Grote Kerk (Church of St Michael).

Koekkoek has paid close attention to the objects, textures and colours of the scene, painting these details with fine brushstrokes, especially in the depiction of the buildings. Sunlight reflects off the windowpanes and a pale wash over the bricks gives the effect of slimy, moss-covered walls. The buildings are large and grand, but the scruffy exteriors suggest they are passed their heyday and have fallen into a state of neglect. In this picture Koekkoek is reminiscing about the former glory and grandeur of Dutch towns and cities, which expanded during the economic prosperity of the seventeenth century. He was inspired by the town and street scenes made by artists of this earlier period, such as Jan van der Heyden, who were keen to depict the developing cities, filled with a sense of civic pride.

The artist has signed his name in the lower left corner of the panel. Born in Amsterdam, Koekkoek came from a family of marine and landscape painters.

Style: Realist
Christen Købke probably painted this portrait of Wilhelm Bendz (1804--1832) around 1830, shortly before Bendz left Copenhagen. Bendz was a pupil of Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. He was enrolled at the Academy from 1820 to 1825, and by 1830 had already acquired a reputation as an accomplished artist, particularly as a portraitist, although he was still receiving advice and tuition from Eckersberg. In 1831 he embarked on a Grand Tour to Germany and Italy, but he only got as far as Vicenza in northern Italy, where he died in 1832, possibly of typhoid fever. He was just 28.

Købke was also enrolled at the Academy, having begun his studies there when he was just 12 years old. In 1825 he became a pupil of Christian August Lorentzen. It was not until Lorentzen’s death in 1825 that he came into contact with Eckersberg, who greatly influenced his approach to painting. Købke left the Academy in 1832, but continued as Eckersberg’s private pupil for another year. Most of Købke’s portraits were of family members or friends. Bendz, who was six years his senior, was an important influence on him, and the portrait is a testament to their close bond.

Both the style and technique of the portrait are typical of Købke’s early maturity, when he was beginning to move away from the influence of Eckersberg and develop a more informal style of portraiture, though one still grounded in an intensely observed realism. Holding his maulstick, with which he would have supported his hand while painting, Bendz glances inquiringly to the side, as if caught at work. The picture’s small format enhances the feeling of intimacy. His pale face, slightly flushed with reddish-pink, especially on the cheeks and broad forehead, is framed by his black frock coat and the sombre neutral background. Købke has used precise dabs and streaks of red and pinkish white to give a lively freshness to the skin tones. These are complemented by the blue-grey of Bendz’s eyes, which Købke has painted with almost scientific detail, even noting the pattern of the irises. Thin lines of brilliant white give definition to his shirt collar, and short curved flecks of white highlight the jacket’s black buttons against the dark cloth.

Bendz was one of the most talented artists of the generation, although his output was small due to his untimely death. Following his death, several copies were made of this portrait, which was owned by Bendz's nephew. Købke himself painted another version of it, perhaps as a souvenir for Eckersberg, their teacher.

Style: Romantic
This large painting of the Virgin Mary with the infant Christ surrounded by saints was once the main panel of an altarpiece. It was made for a chapel dedicated to Saint Christina of Bolsena in the church of San Francesco in Montone in the Italian region of Umbria.

A large stone hangs from a rope looped round Christina's neck, as she was weighted down and thrown into a river in punishment for her Christian faith. She survived this, but was eventually killed. To the left of the Virgin is Saint Sebastian, his naked torso shot through with arrows -- a reminder of his failed execution, which was ordered by the Roman emperor. The saints standing on the ground are Saint Jerome, his cardinal’s hat by his feet, and Saint Nicholas of Bari, shown wearing his bishop’s robes and hat, called a mitre. Three golden spheres rest on the floor next to him, which represent the sacks of money that he anonymously donated to three destitute young noblewomen, providing them with the means to get married.

This kind of altarpiece, where the saints and the Virgin and Child occupy one panel and are located in a unified imaginary setting, is called a sacra conversazione ('holy conversation'). This one is set in a broad Italian landscape leading to a fortified town, the sea and mountains beyond. It is populated with goatherds, travelling friars and people transporting goods on horseback.

The Latin inscription on the fictive sheet of paper at the bottom of the picture gives Signorelli’s name, the date he made the picture -- 1515 -- and the names of the patrons. They were a French doctor called Aloysius (Louis) of Rodez and his wife Tommasina  The contract for the commission stipulates that the painting should be the work of Signorelli's own hand, and that as payment he and his family would receive free medical services from the doctor whenever required. But it seems that Signorelli did have some assistance: his nephew, Francesco, painted the predella which ran along the bottom of our panel (now in the Museo del Brera, Milan) and featured scenes from the life of Saint Christina. Certain areas of our panel have also been identified as the work of assistants.

Surviving records reveal that Signorelli took only two months -- July and August of 1515 -- to make this picture. There is certainly evidence in the painting that he was working very quickly. The pattern of Saint Nicholas’s golden damask robes, for example, seems to continue over the fabric folds, rather than following their contours, as for example in the area around the uppermost deep fold beneath the rich green lining. Other parts of his robes were painted with great care: the stole showing saints in niches mimics embroidery, while the grey mantle -- a strip of it is apparent just above his feet -- has an irregular pattern which imitates the subtle effect of watered silk.

Style: High Renaissance