wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
The infant Christ stands on the lap of the Virgin Mary, reaching forward to give her a kiss. She turns her cheek to receive her son's embrace, supporting him as he seems to be a little unsteady on his feet. Strong lighting emphasises the smooth, pale skin of both figures as well as Christ's golden hair, though it leaves much of his face in shadow. Sassoferrato has given great attention to the folds of drapery, both in the Virgin's blue cloak and in the deep green curtain behind the two figures. Through an archway, we see Saint Joseph coming towards the house and, behind him, a view of distant mountains.

Sassoferrato was born Giovanni Battista Salvi and took his nickname from the town of his birth, but he spent the majority of his career working in Rome, where his immaculately polished paintings were consciously anachronistic. This composition is based on an etching by Guido Reni, a seventeenth-century painter from Bologna whose work deeply influenced Sassoferrato. However, Sassoferrato's style, with its intense colours, soft modelling of form, and highly finished, enamel-like quality, is most deeply indebted to earlier artists such as Raphael and Perugino. We know that he produced copies after these masters' works (the National Gallery owns a copy after Perugino that is probably by Sassoferrato: The Baptism of Christ), and used elements from their paintings and drawings in his own compositions. Sassoferrato was so closely linked to these artists that his popularity in the nineteenth century was in part thanks to a renewed interest in the work of Raphael. He in turn may have influenced the Pre-Raphaelites.

Like his contemporary Dolci, Sassoferrato produced multiple versions of his smaller paintings, which could be sold to private patrons. The relatively small size of this picture, the tender relationship between mother and child and the intimate, somewhat domestic nature of the setting suggest that it was intended for private devotion. It may never have been delivered to its patron, however, since it was probably one of a group of late works left in Sassoferrato's studio at his death in 1685. The painting is thought to have passed to his son, Alessio Salvi, and then to Salvi's granddaughter, remaining in the family until the early nineteenth century.

This picture and The Virgin in Prayer were both acquired by the National Gallery in the mid-nineteenth century, when Sassoferrato's star was high in the London art world. The bright colours of both pictures were initially toned down by the Gallery using tinted varnish and overpainted with cobalt blue to better align with the Victorian taste for more subdued colouring. When this picture was cleaned in 1986, these layers were removed, and the Virgin's dazzling ultramarine robe and the vivid green curtain can now be appreciated as the artist originally intended.

Style: Baroque, Academic
The heavy, black clouds that hang low over the castle seem to threaten snow and yet more snow. Although a fitful sun struggles through, the eerie light on the castle's yellow walls and steely tipped towers seems to come more from the moon than the sun.

The tiny people skating on the ice seem insignificant against the building's imposing presence -- they are little more than silhouettes, skating, sledging and playing kolf, the forerunner of golf, in the semi-dark. The opposite is true of the paintings of Hendrick Avercamp -- like A Scene on the Ice near a Town and A Winter Scene with Skaters near a Castle -- where the buildings are a background for dozens of tiny skaters whose clothes and activities are painted with exquisite detail.

Muiden Castle was one of the oldest and most important medieval castles in early seventeenth-century Holland, and Beerstraaten treats the painting as a dramatic portrait of the ancient building rather than as a skating scene. Seen from the north-east, the image is accurate and atmospheric, with the tiny skaters simply an enlivening motif. The artist has, however, altered the arrangement of the rest of the landscape to suit the painting's composition. In reality, from the north-east the sea would appear behind the castle, but Beerstraaten needed the reflected light to pick out the front of the building and take the eye into the distance beyond it. You can see a view of the castle from the west, albeit in the distance, in Fishermen near Muiden Castle.

Probably built in the early fourteenth century for Count Floris V of Holland, the castle is about seven miles from Amsterdam, at the entry of the Vecht river into the Zuiderzee. It came into its own in the early seventeenth century when it was the home of Pieter Cornelisz. Hooft, a famous Dutch poet and historian. It became the cultural centre of the Dutch Republic: eminent poets, composers and statesmen would gather there to debate, play music and declaim their poetry, a group that became known as the Muiderkring ('The Muider Circle'). Among these was Constantijn Huygens, whose talents were many -- poet, musician, designer: the quintessential Renaissance man. His portrait by Thomas Keyser is in the National Gallery's collection.

Hooft died in 1647, some seven years before the picture was painted. The glittering life within the castle's walls disappeared and it fell into disrepair until it was saved from demolition in 1825. It was opened as a national museum in 1878 and you can still see it today, the building and its gardens both fully restored.

Style: Baroque
Barely a third of van Goyen's painting of life on the ice in seventeenth-century Dordrecht shows people; the rest is sky. But he still manages to pack the picture full of incident and humour. Some people squeeze into horse-drawn sledges -- the large one close to us is signed van Goyen and dated on the back panel -- while others zoom across the ice or stand around and chat. Some play kolf, the forerunner of golf -- or miss their shot and fall over, watched by an unhelpful dog.

The air is still with a mist of frost and yet the picture seems to move -- a skirt flaps, a hat skids on the ice, legs kick in the air. We know which of the skaters is practised and moving at speed and which are beginners, clinging on, their bodies tense. Facial expressions are shown with a flick of the brush.

The large building on the right is the Riedijk water gate, outside Dordrecht. Further away across the frozen Merwede river, on the left, stands Merwede Castle, already a ruin by van Goyen's time. These same ruins appear in Peasants and Cattle by the River Merwede by Aelbert Cuyp. For other skating pictures, look at Hendrick Avercamp's A Scene on the Ice near a Town and A Winter Scene with Skaters near a Castle.

Style: Baroque
Duccio was the leading artist in the Tuscan city of Siena. He developed a style known for its grace, fluid lines and harmonious colouring. He is one of the most significant artists of the fourteenth century, who animated Byzantine models to create humane depictions of holy figures.

This is a triptych, a painting made up of three sections. The two smaller panels -- Saint Dominic on the left and Saint Aurea on the right -- can fold inwards to cover and protect the central image of the Virgin and Child. This was essential as the triptych was most probably designed as a portable altarpiece for private prayer while travelling.

The Virgin Mary's long, slim fingers frame the Christ Child's tiny feet. Here Christ, still an infant, plays with his mother's veil which is bordered with decorative gold lettering. His robe is purple, a colour reserved for the ruling elite from the time of Christ’s birth, used here to emphasise his divinity and importance for Christians. The delicately decorated haloes have been made by using a sharp tool to indent the soft gold leaf of the background. The four angels who enter the scene on either side emphasise the devotional nature of the image: the lower two clasp their hands in prayer, while the upper two waft the holy figures with incense contained within thuribles -- perfume burners swung on chains.

Saint Dominic wears the white robe and black cape worn by the preaching friars of the religious order that he founded in the thirteenth century. The star above his left shoulder may refer to the legend that at his baptism his godmother saw a bright star appear on his forehead. Saint Aurea is dressed in a gold-edged pink cloak over a green dress; her right hand is raised in blessing and in her left she carries a blue cross.

Once the two side panels were closed, the only clue to how the triptych was used was the pointed gable which remained uncovered. Its central focus is King David, regarded as the greatest King of Israel. He is surrounded by key figures and prophets of the Old Testament including Abraham, Moses, Jacob and Isaiah, who carry scrolls inscribed with extracts of their prophecies. Their presence offers a clue to the image of the Virgin and Child within: the prophets foretold that a king greater than David would emerge in Israel. New Testament writers associated Christ -- a spiritual, rather than earthly king -- with this figure.

It is likely that Duccio made this triptych for Niccolò degli Albertini da Prato, who became Cardinal Bishop of the Roman port city of Ostia in 1303. Records show that he owned three such portable altarpieces. The Cardinal was probably involved in choosing the images, which explains the inclusion of Saint Aurea, the patron saint of Ostia, and Saint Dominic, since he himself belonged to the Dominican order. X-ray images show that a leather strap once held the triptych closed for travelling and that the reverse of the side panels bore the Cardinal's coat of arms.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
This small picture is based on an altarpiece Giovanni Battista Tiepolo made in about 1742 for a church in Padua. The altarpiece, which is still in situ, is dedicated to Saints Maximus and Oswald, though only the figure of Saint Maximus is the same in both.

These two saints don't often appear in eighteenth-century art, but here they reflect a strong local tradition. Saint Maximus, draped in an exquisite embroidered robe and with his finger tips gently pressed together, was Padua's second bishop; he died around AD 195. Saint Oswald, seated on the right in gleaming armour, was King of Northumbria in England. Born in about AD 603, he died fighting the pagan ruler of neighbouring Mercia. He became a martyr and was famed mainly as a protector against the plague -- it seems there was a cult associated with him in Northern Italy.

Saint Oswald's usual attribute of a black raven is missing here but it is included in the main altarpiece, which suggests that Tiepolo did not intend this sketch to be an exact copy of the altarpiece's composition. The saint glances towards the cherubs descending on clouds from the ceiling of the loggia (open-sided gallery or room); one carries a golden crown, perhaps to symbolise the divinity of these figures. A young man with a palm branch tucked into his clothing -- a reference to eternal life -- kneels beside Maximus, while another boy stands in the shadows holding the bishop's staff and mitre.

The National Gallery owns several oil sketches by Tiepolo that relate to finished altarpieces, like Saint Augustine, Louis of France, John the Evangelist and a Bishop Saint and A Vision of the Trinity appearing to Pope Saint Clement. Each  of these scenes is framed by an arched building or loggia, which draws our eye towards the carefully arranged figures set against a bright and airy background. The architecture places us at a lower level than the painted figures, as we would be in devotion.

Style: Baroque, Rococo
This is one of a series of four paintings by Veronese that concern the trials and rewards of love, although their precise meanings remain unclear. The titles are not original and were given to the paintings in 1727. The compositions are designed to be seen from below, so we know the pictures were intended for a ceiling or a series of ceilings.

The paintings are recorded in 1648 in the collection of the Holy Roman Emperor in Prague. We do not know who commissioned them, but it is most likely that the Four Allegories of Love were made for an Italian patron and were still in Italy in the 1620s, when Van Dyck recorded two of the compositions in his  Italian sketchbook.

It is possible that the series of paintings was made for the parallel suites of rooms of a husband and wife in a Venetian palace, two of the paintings for the reception room and bedchamber of the man and two for the equivalent rooms of his spouse. This painting and Happy Union seem particularly intended for a female viewer.

In this painting, titled Unfaithfulness, a naked woman with her back to the viewer sits between two clothed men, exchanging a letter with one of them. It is not clear whether she is giving the letter to him or he is passing it to her. It is inscribed with red letters which appear to spell either ‘che / uno possede', meaning ‘which one person possesses’, or Ch.. / mi. p(ossede), meaning 'which/who possesses me' -- the dots indicating illegible letters. The inscription may mean ‘she who has one man (should be satisfied)’ or possibly ‘she who has one lover (will always want another)’.

A child, similar to that in Happy Union, holds the woman by the leg, while Cupid plays music on a clavichord. The child's pose echoes that of the woman. Cupid stands beside the courtly young man with whom the woman is exchanging the note. The woman is physically held by the child and the man on the right, although her attention is drawn to the music-making Cupid, and her other hand is joined with that of her lover on the left, around the letter that passes between them. The sinuous shape of her arms is echoed in the twisting tree trunks.

This painting seems intended for a female audience and to perhaps pair with Happy Union, although none of the men are the same. Even if this picture represents indecision in courtship rather than marital deceit, there is nothing within the picture to express disapproval.

The green drapery over the woman's thigh and buttocks may have been added for the sake of decency, weakening the composition. The blue pigment smalt used for the sky in all four paintings has turned grey. The russet-coloured jacket and boots of the bearded lover have lost much of the original modelling on account of the degraded pigments, and the colour of Cupid’s wings has changed.

Style: High Renaissance
Two women gather sticks by a watery clearing in front of a group of trees. The trees are arranged in an arc, with the most prominent left of centre and the others set back on each side. This is a composition habitually used by  Diaz in his views of the forest of Fontainebleau. As with his Common with Stormy Sunset, it shows the influence of Théodore Rousseau, in particular paintings such as The Pond (1842–3, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Reims).

The women, one in a white blouse and cap and red shawl, provide a decorative element, rather in the manner of Corot's red-capped figures, adding a note of colour to the pervading green of the landscape. According to restrictions reinstated in 1848–9, women and children were only allowed to gather wood from December to February, but the season depicted here is almost certainly spring.  The whole is very thickly painted, with many layers and a degree of impasto, which may be because Diaz was emulating such Dutch seventeenth-century landscapists as Ruisdael. The trees are built up from dark to light, giving depth and three-dimensionality. The foliage is picked out with numerous touches of light paint, which gives an effect of dancing light. The trees are painted directly over the sky, and Diaz has broken up the greens of the foliage with final touches of blue paint to create a more dappled appearance.

Style: Barbizon
An unidentified woman and boy kneel in prayer before the Virgin and Child with saints in a landscape. The white-bearded and bald saint on the right is Saint Joseph. The flowering rod he holds represents the staff that broke into blossom to show he was chosen to marry the Virgin Mary, as told in the Golden Legend. With his left hand he presents the kneeling boy, who looks up in prayer. The boy's distinctive appearance, with rounded cheeks and a fuzz of chestnut curls, suggests that this is a portrait of a particular child.

On the left, Saint Lucy, the bearer of light, holds a martyr's palm in one hand and a burning oil lamp in the other. She is more usually shown in paintings with her eyes on a small dish, as she is the protector of sight and, in some accounts of her martyrdom, had her eyes gouged out.

The woman in an ornamented dress and cloak kneels below Saint Lucy with her hands clasped in prayer, gazing at the infant Christ. She is probably the mother of the kneeling boy. The Virgin turns towards her, and places her right hand on the woman's shoulder. The light around the woman's head suggests she is supposed to be a saint, but it may not be original. The mother and son are probably the donors of the painting. The haloes rendered as glowing light with numerous concentric but broken lines are characteristic of paintings from Ferrara, but are not found in any signed or documented work by Cariani and may be later additions.

The composition is derived from Camillo Boccaccino's altarpiece in Cremona Cathedral, commissioned in 1533, showing the Virgin and Child with Saints Martha, Mary Magdalene, James and Anthony Abbot. The altarpiece is now lost, but known from copies and a print. The artist's dependence on this source may explain the features that are uncharacteristic of Cariani, such as the softness of the drapery, Christ's sprawling pose and the facial appearance of Saint Joseph.

The Boccaccino altarpiece was taller than it was wide, whereas this painting is wider than it is tall. The horizontal format showing kneeling donors recommended by saints to the Virgin and Child in a landscape is typical of Venetian sixteenth-century painting. Although originally from Bergamo, Cariani lived in Venice from 1508, returning to work in Bergamo in 1517--21 and then again during periods in the 1520s and in about 1541. If the painting is by Cariani it must be a very late work, possibly from the 1540s.

Some of the colours in the painting have probably changed over time. The drapery over Saint Lucy's shoulders which is now brown and brick red may originally have been green shot with rose, and the arabesque pattern of the dress of the praying woman which is now dark brown was probably once green. The painting was flattened and scorched when the picture was relined during restoration, possibly carried out during the eighteenth century, and much discoloured varnish was ingrained in the surface of the picture in the process.

Style: High Renaissance
Frans van Mieris painted this tiny self portrait three days before he turned 39 in 1674. By this time, he was a highly successful artist in his home city of Leiden. His work was bought, sometimes for vast sums, by the wealthy of the city but also by nobility from abroad, including the Medici, the ruling family of Florence.

Perhaps for this reason, van Mieris chose to show himself in the Italian version of the costume of one of the characters from the commedia dell'arte that originated in Italy. This was, and still is, a rumbustious form of physical theatre, in which the actors sing, mime, dance, play music, tell bawdy jokes, perform acrobatic feats and rough and often rude knock about. Originally played in the streets, by the seventeenth century it had evolved in two ways: one form continued as popular street theatre, the other became a more sophisticated version performed in private venues. In van Mieris's Dutch Republic, this would have been a Chamber of Rhetoric -- precursors of theatres -- where plays of all kinds were put on and poetry recited. Comedies were the preferred form of drama and judging by van Mieris's expression in the picture, one he would have enjoyed too.

Van Mieris may or may not have acted in the commedia himself, but his gorgeous costume in this painting would perhaps align him with the more refined version. His painting technique was certainly refined, so meticulous that brushmarks in his pictures are almost universally invisible. The assured painting of the elegant velvet cloak gleaming in the light contrasts with the delicate handling of the lace collar and with the white fabric and brocade ribbons of his huge puffball sleeves. The costume and his nonchalant pose, leaning on a balustrade looking back at us to invite us to share his fun, appear to be that of Ottavio, one of the lovers in the commedia. Van Mieris plays the cittern -- a stringed instrument from medieval times -- though the character is more often shown playing a flute or a guitar. Ottavio would have used these to serenade the woman he loved.

Ottavio's feathered hat is precariously balanced on the balustrade, adding to the whimsical, informal nature of the picture. Next to it is a glass, sparkling in the light, delicate and fragile, painted with great skill, and half full -- for van Mieris, a wine glass would never have been half empty. There are several accounts of his heavy drinking, and in spite of the huge amounts he earned in his lifetime, he left very little when he died. He had no problem with showing his face ageing, the cheeks becoming slack and, in other portraits, red nosed and flushed. Popular and gregarious, he painted himself in many guises: in Turkish costume, as a cavalier, in a velvet hat with a twirly handlebar moustache and, most tellingly, as a jolly drunkard -- mostly smiling and always with laughing eyes, inviting us to share his appetite for life.

Style: Baroque