wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
These are two panels from a triptych for S. Maria della Scala, Verona. The central panel of the Virgin and Child with Saint Anne by Gerolamo dai Libri and the flanking panel of Saint Roch by Paolo Morando are both in the National Gallery's collection, but the other flanking panel of Saint Sebastian by Francesco di Marco India Torbido is missing. It is quite unusual for each of the three panels of a triptych to be painted by a different artist.

The commission for this work was connected with an outbreak of plague in Verona from 1510 to 1512. Roch and Sebastian are both saints invoked against plague.

In the central panel, the Virgin, Christ Child and Saint Anne are in an enclosed garden, or hortus conclusus, symbolic of the Virgin's purity. Three musician angels sit at the base of the throne playing instruments and singing; one reads her part from an open book of music.The trellis surrounding the garden supports climbing pink roses -- a sprig of which has been plucked and placed at the feet of Saint Roch in Morando's flanking panel. The three holy figures are sitting on each other's laps beneath a lemon tree, emphasising that this is the generational family tree of Christ.

The lemon tree features frequently in images of the Virgin and Child produced in Verona during this period, including in the National Gallery's other painting by Morando, The Virgin and Child, Saint John the Baptist and an Angel. Here it may refer to the lemon tree in the Song of Solomon (2: 3), in which the lemon tree becomes a symbol of the beloved or Christ: ‘As a citron among trees of the forest, So is my beloved among the sons, In his shade I delighted, and sat down, And his fruit is sweet to my palate’.The dead dragon at the feet of the Virgin and the olive branch held by the Christ Child symbolise victory over the devil, but may also refer to the ending of the 1516 siege of Verona. After the Treaty of Brussels in December 1516, Emperor Maximilian I gave Verona to his grandson Charles I of Spain, who ceded it to France, who then returned it to Venice.

In Morando’s flanking panel, Saint Roch turns in surprise as an angel swoops down from heaven to bless him. Having contracted plague from those he tended and been turned out of Piacenza, Saint Roch is living in the wilderness. His hat hangs from his pilgrim staff. The crossed keys on its brim show that has made the pilgrimage to Rome, as they are the emblem of Saint Peter whose basilica is there. Saint Roch lifts his garment to reveal his ulcerated thigh caused by the plague, and at his feet is the nobleman's dog which brought him a loaf of bread every day and licked his wounds. The panel is signed and dated 1518.

Made in Verona, at the crossroads of artistic influences, this altarpiece combines the emphasis on light and colour of Venetian art and the sculptural style of Paduan painting derived from works by Mantegna with the focus on naturalistic detail inspired by northern European artists.

Style: High Renaissance
These three panels were originally part of an early keyboard instrument, or possibly a pair of instruments, and show scenes of music-making and drinking. Silenus gathering Grapes and Young Satyr gathering Grapes are probably from the inside of the lid, and would only have been seen when the instrument was open. Marsyas and Olympus may have also belonged to the lid of the keyboard or to some part of the instrument's case.

They were almost certainly painted by Annibale Carracci during the late 1590s, while he was working for the powerful Farnese family in Rome. The designs for some of the figures are based on antiquities in the Farnese collection. The instruments probably once belonged to Fulvio Orsini, classical scholar and owner of the famous Vatican Virgil, one of only three illustrated manuscripts to survive from the classical world. Orsini spent over 40 years in the service of the Farnese, combining the functions of librarian and curator, and living in the Palazzo Farnese in Rome.

On 21 January 1600, worried by his declining health, Orsini made his will along with a scrupulous inventory of his collection. Two fine musical instruments were listed in this, one of which he described as being commonly called a 'Graviorganum', the other a 'vero Cymbalum'. The former is presumably a claviorganum, a harpsichord combined with an organ and fitted with strings as well as pipes. Hardly any of these instruments survive, but they were fairly widespread in the sixteenth century, and some early examples had curved lids. They were often brightly painted, sometimes with musical themes drawn from classical literature: the Theewes Claviorgan, dated 1579, has Orpheus playing to animals on the inside of the lid (Victoria and Albert Museum, London).

The long panel of Marsyas and Olympus might have been the keyboard lid of the claviorganum -- technical examination has revealed three small hooks embedded in the bottom of the panel, which were probably inserted as some form of hinge -- or possibly part of the case of the 'vero Cymbalum'.

Orsini left both his instruments to one of his executors, Orazio Lancellotti. The first certain reference to Silenus gathering Grapes and Young Satyr gathering Grapes records them as part of an instrument in the Palazzo Lancellotti in Rome during the seventeenth century, so there is good reason to think that this was the instrument bequeathed to him by Orsini.

Style: Academic, Baroque
In this miniaturised altarpiece, the Virgin Mary sits with an enormous Christ Child on a gilded throne topped by a scalloped shell. They are flanked by four saints. On the left is Saint James the Greater, with his pilgrim's staff, and a man dressed as a deacon holding a martyr's palm, who might be either Saint Stephen or Saint Lawrence. On the right is a Franciscan in a grey habit -- probably Bernardino of Siena, to whom he bears some resemblance (look at Schiavone's Saint Bernardino) -- and an unidentified saint.

Six men and six women kneel in prayer, the men on the Virgin's right-hand -- and more honourable -- side. They are stylishly dressed in the fashions of the 1490s. They could perhaps be members of a single family, arranged behind a married couple who face each other, or possibly members of a confraternity.

The young man at the front has his hair cut in the same style as the sitter in Marco d'Oggiono's painting of 1494, Portrait of a Man aged 20; the older men are clearly less concerned with fashionable hairstyles. The women wear a variety of headgear, depending on age, status and -- presumably -- inclination. Two ladies have their hair hanging in smooth curves round their cheeks and then pulled into a long plaits, a Spanish fashion brought to Milan by Isabella d'Aragona in 1489. Two wear dresses with laced bodices and tight slashed sleeves; the sitter's clothing in Giovanni Ambrogio de Predis's Portrait of a Woman in Profile is similar.

We don't know who the artist was, although he was evidently familiar with the work of Leonardo da Vinci: Mary's head here seems to be based on that in 'The Virgin of the Rocks'. He is known as the Master of the Pala Sforzesca after a large altarpiece painted for Ludovico il Moro in 1494/5, which also shows the enthroned Virgin and Child with four saints and kneeling paired donors. This iconographical scheme belongs to a long-standing Lombard tradition, going back to Vincenzo Foppa's Pala Bottigella (Pavia, Pinacoteca Malaspina), painted nearly three decades earlier.

The extensive use of gold leaf is also typical of the Lombard region. Much of its decorative effect is now lost, but various gilding techniques were used to produce subtle variations in texture and surface. The Virgin's dress has lost its modelling and some colour (there are traces of red and blue pigment). Very finely hatched lines in areas of the drapery would have scattered light and given a subtly brighter appearance. Look closely and you can see a white and red foliate pattern on the sleeve of the lady kneeling by the Virgin, and that sgraffito (where a top layer of paint was scraped away to reveal the layer beneath) was used on the panel on the deacon's chest.

Some of the colours have also darkened. Blues now appear dull, mainly due to numerous layers of discoloured varnishes and dirt on the surface, and reds have become purplish-grey as the mercury sulphide in the vermilion pigment has deteriorated.

Style: Early Renaissance
In this striking portrait, a young man stands with one hand placed firmly on his hip, magnificently dressed in a red fur-lined cape, a luxurious silver silk waistcoat and red breeches. He looks forward with pursed lips and no hint of a smile. This is Richard Milles of Nackington, who sat for this portrait when he was in Rome during his Grand Tour. He points to a map which lies next a classical sculpted bust; the map is inscribed with 'Grisons', the name of a Swiss Canton that he probably visited on his way to Italy.

Milles was a Member of Parliament for Canterbury from 1761 to 1780. He commissioned Batoni to paint several other works: a three-quarter length portrait (location unknown) and a miniature on ivory (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge). The artist's portraits are highly finished, with facial features and fabrics vividly and precisely evoked -- here, Batoni has confidently imitated the soft fur of the cape and the ruffled linen of the shirt. The swaggering pose appears frequently in Batoni's portraits and in the work of earlier artists, such as Titian and Van Dyck, as a way of establishing the sitter's commanding presence and their self-assurance. The mood of this portrait is one of self-assurance and ease, created by the artist to dignify his sitter.

Batoni often used antiquities to establish both a sitter's location and their status as a learned, cultivated gentleman. He became extremely well-known for his portraits in which a casually posed sitter is surrounded by classical statuary. Here, the classical columns at the right form the backdrop not only for the sitter but also for a bust of the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, which only features this once in Batoni's work. This is a depiction of a real sculpture, now in the Capitoline Museum in Rome. Marcus Aurelius was famed for his success as a military leader and as a philosopher who wrote extensively on stoicism. On the table beside the bust are several books, perhaps travel notebooks or philosophical treatises. In the background, we catch a glimpse of a classical building and mountainous Italian landscape.

Rome was one of the essential stops for a gentleman in search of education and cultural exploration in Europe during the eighteenth century. Batoni was established there as the most sought-after portraitist of his day, and painted this portrait in around 1759, when he was at his most prolific. His popularity continued throughout the 1760s and 1770s, during which time another Englishman in Rome commissioned a portrait, also in the National Gallery's collection.

Style: Rococo, Neoclassical
Holland enjoyed an economic miracle during the seventeenth century, developing from a Spanish vassal state to one of the most prosperous countries in the world. Its fortunes were founded, to a large extent, on the sea. Its trading empire extended around the globe, its merchant fleet was one of the world’s biggest and its navy one of the most powerful, offering protection to both the nation and its cargo vessels.

Here we see two of those men-of-war, or frigates, lying at peace, but with their function abundantly clear: the gun ports are open and their canon protruding. Presumably this is for maintenance or as part of a drill; at anchor in a quiet estuary there would be no other reason to have guns at the ready. The estuary may be the River Maas (or Meuse) with its quayside toll-house on the left edge of the picture. Simon de Vlieger grew up near here in Rotterdam, although by the time he made this painting he had probably moved to Amsterdam. For his customers, the exact location was probably not important. Instead, such a scene would have undoubtedly evoked reassuring thoughts of national security and naval power, and de Vlieger’s contemporaries would have immediately recognised the national flags and insignia displayed on the frigates. The nearer one has the arms of the Province of Holland on its stern and a Dutch flag at the top of the main mast, while we can just make out a Dutch ensign at the stern of the more distant frigate.

The figures standing on the quay in the foreground represent something of a cross-section of Dutch society. Some, smartly dressed, stand and watch; others fish, while the crews of the boats are at work. The largest ship at the jetty is a two-master, partly hidden from view, but those in the foreground are service boats which may be running supplies or people out to the men-of-war. The one on the left is probably a wijdschip, a small, gaff-rigged transport vessel; the two smaller vessels on either side of it are working boats called kagen.

The light on this bright and breezy day comes from the left of the picture. The sun is low and de Vlieger has used it to strong effect, backlighting the translucent sails of the boats against the quayside; they also cast deep shadows across the choppy wavelets in the foreground. As he often did, de Vlieger has signed the painting on a piece of flotsam in the foreground -- in this case, it is a floating spar which sticks awkwardly out of the water on the right. There is no date to go with the signature but he probably painted this picture in the late 1640s.

Style: Baroque
A life-size figure stands before us, holding a skull in one hand and gesticulating with the other. Shown close up, the young man is facing us frontally but looks to his left, his eyes fixed on something that lies outside of the painting. It is the gesture of his right hand that focuses us. Dramatically foreshortened, his fingers seem to project out of the canvas into our space. With his open mouth and hand, it appears as if he is either about to talk or pausing in the middle of a declamation.

This is one of Hals's most captivating paintings, as well as an outstanding example of his bold technique of painting freely and quickly, which sets him apart from most artists of the time. There is no trace of the underpainting that was usually employed at the time. The drapery was laid down in one layer over a reddish ground, which shows through in places to provide mid-tones between highlight and shadow. In some areas, such as the red feather, the paint was applied wet-in-wet, blending some of the colours. The contour of the nose was even scratched through wet paint, perhaps with the handle of the brush. And some areas, such as the skull, are modelled with very course hatching.

This painting is not a portrait. The skull  is a symbol of mortality, a reminder of the transience of human life. Such a subject is known as a 'vanitas' (Latin for vanity), a name derived from a verse in the Old Testament (Ecclesiastes 12: 8): 'Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, all is vanity.' The symbolic character of the painting is underlined by the young man's costume, which is not contemporary. The beret with a large ostrich feather and the drapery are a fanciful recreation of sixteenth-century fashion, used by painters and actors alike mainly to represent allegorical and historical figures. In fact, the subject has in the past been incorrectly identified as the graveyard scene from William Shakespeare's Hamlet (Act V, Scene I), in which Hamlet finds the skull of Yorick, his father’s beloved court jester. Holding the skull, Hamlet speaks as if Yorick is alive before him, and contemplates the temporary nature of life. But there is no evidence that Shakespeare's famous play was ever performed in the Dutch Republic or translated into Dutch during Hals's time. Rather, both the painting and Shakespeare's famous scene are rooted in the same tradition.

The Netherlandish tradition of showing young boys holding skulls can be traced back to engravings of the early sixteenth century. A similar composition to Hals's painting can be found in a pen drawing by Hendrick Goltzius of 1614. It shows a fancifully dressed youth with a skull, wearing a beret with a multitude of feathers. The Latin inscription in the background leaves no doubt about the symbolic character of the picture. Translated, it reads: 'Who escapes? No man.'

Style: Baroque
We don't know who painted this portrait or the sitter's identity, though he was clearly a man of means. His clothes are rich but sombre -- a black or dark grey hat and doublet, and a purple coat lined with grey damask. His white shirt is finely woven, the laces at his neck have gold tips and he wears four gold rings, some set with jewels. His clothing suggests the portrait was painted in about 1535 in the regions of the Low Countries north of the Rhine and the Meuse.

His hand is resting on a damaged skull; it has lost most of its teeth and its lower jaw. Skulls in Renaissance art were symbols of death, as in Holbein's Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selve ('The Ambassadors'). The pansies he holds -- which are painted on top of the doublet, rather than in spaces left blank for them -- are a visual pun: the French name for the flower is pensée, which means thought. The painting is a kind of vanitas, and the man is clearly meditating on death, hence his solemn and distant expression. In the sixteenth century, contemplating mortality, specifically one's own, was believed to be morally uplifting and improving.

The painting's style is close to that of Jan van Scorel, especially his portraits of pilgrims now in the Centraal Museum, Utrecht and the Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem. Van Scorel and his followers tended to elongate the faces and enlarge the features of their male subjects and give them low foreheads, as here. But while Scorel's paintings have distinctive, linear underdrawing, infrared reflectography shows no underdrawing in this painting. It is therefore attributed to a follower rather than Scorel himself, possibly someone in his workshop.

The oak panel, chalk ground and medium -- linseed oil -- are typical of Netherlandish painting of this period. The purple pigment fluorite in the collar and sleeves is relatively uncommon. Painters at this time were interested in new sources for pigments and in experimenting with pigments that were not in common use. The mineral calcium flouride, from which the pigment was made, was perhaps obtained locally.

Although the painted surface stops short of the edges, the preparatory layers -- the ground and primer -- continue to all four edges. Perhaps a frame was attached after the preparatory layers had been applied but before painting, or maybe there were guidelines showing the artist where the frame would go.

Whoever the artist was he was a talented painter, working quickly and skilfully. He exploited the slow-drying qualities of oil paint by working wet-in-wet and by dragging and feathering his paint to smooth changes of tone. His skills are shown especially well in the skull.

Style: High Renaissance
Prince Charles Louis, Count Palatine, was the second son of Frederick V, Elector Palatine and briefly King of Bohemia. His elder brother Henry had died young, and although Charles Louis was now heir to the Palatinate, his father had been deposed and the family were living in exile in the Netherlands. His mother, Elizabeth Stuart, was the sister of Charles I, King of England. She arranged for Charles Louis to visit his uncle with a view to raising funds to enable him to regain the Palatinate, and this portrait is likely to have been painted during his extended stay in London.

Charles Louis is seen full height, in fashionable but restrained dress. The helmet and gloves from his armour sit on a stone ledge by his side. The wooded cliff behind him and misty landscape in the distance place him out of doors, a man of action. But his military baton is balanced somewhat awkwardly on the ledge and steadied, with seemingly little confidence, by a limp hand. The expression on his long, slender face seems uncertain, almost as if he is about to speak but doesn’t quite know what to say.

The blue riband around Charles Louis’ neck holds a small medal with a tiny image of Saint George, patron saint of England. This is the Order of the Garter, the oldest order of chivalry in the country, and limited to 24 living Knights or Ladies Companion. Only the reigning monarch could appoint members of the Order -- a fact still true today. Membership is restricted to the royal family, foreign royalty and statesmen considered to have given special service to the country. Charles Louis was in England with two of his brothers, but was the only one to be honoured, so he can be identified by the Garter. Although he had been deprived of his throne and lived in comparative poverty, Charles I bestowed the honour on his nephew, even as relations between them were deteriorating. He was considered entitled to it solely because of his Stuart blood: he was part of the all-important Stuart dynasty through his mother.

During the English Civil War, Charles Louis’ sympathies were with Parliament, although he never fought on their behalf, as his brothers did for the King. It's possible that he hoped to be chosen as his uncle's successor, but this was not to be. Later, he returned to the Palatinate, which had been laid waste during the Thirty Years' War. He spent the rest of his life restoring his German territories as Elector, but was denied the throne of Bohemia.

Style: Baroque, Stuart
These angels were once part of a large altarpiece made for the church of Santa Croce, Florence, where Franciscan friars -- members of the religious order founded by Saint Francis -- had a convent. A Franciscan friar and saint, Louis of Toulouse, was pictured on the main tier.

The image of the saint is now lost, but it was framed by a painted arch within a rectangular panel. The gaps on either side of the arch, called spandrels, were filled with these angels. All the spandrel angels have different poses -- these two both look down to the image below. They appear to lean on the edge of the arch which once framed the image of Saint Louis, but now frames an empty space.

An eighteenth-century drawing shows the altarpiece when it was still in the convent at Santa Croce. The image of Saint Louis of Toulouse was not in bad condition at that time, so it is unclear why the angels were detached from it.

Ugolino included similar angels in an altarpiece now in the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts. The idea for the design may have come from an altarpiece for San Domenico, Perugia, by the early fourteenth-century painter Duccio.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance