wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
In the foreground Velázquez paints an everyday kitchen scene. A maid pounds garlic in a mortar, and other ingredients lie scattered on the table: eggs, a shrivelled red pepper, fish -- a traditional symbol associated with Christ -- and an earthenware jug probably containing olive oil. An older woman points towards the girl, as if giving her instructions or telling her off for working too hard, or she may be drawing our attention to the figures in the background. These two women are very naturalistic and may be based on real models.

The scene visible in the upper right is taken from the New Testament (Luke 10: 38--42). Mary sits at Christ's feet, listening to him, and her sister Martha complains that she should not be left to serve the food alone. Christ replies: 'Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things. But one thing is needful, and Mary has taken that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.' The story encourages a life of contemplation over action, conveyed through the different behaviours of Martha and Mary.

We view this biblical scene through an opening, although it has also been read as a reflection in a mirror or a picture on the wall. Its relationship to the figures in the foreground is also debated; dressed in contemporary costume, they may be intended as a latter-day Martha and Mary. The elderly woman's pointing finger suggests that we should perhaps think about how these two scenes -- the everyday and the biblical -- are connected. Velázquez may have got the idea of combining a contemporary everyday scene with a Gospel story from sixteenth-century Flemish art, known to him through engravings.

Velázquez probably painted this work in 1618, shortly after leaving Francisco Pacheco's studio and becoming an independent artist in Seville. We do not know who commissioned it. It may have been intended for a domestic setting, such as the home of the wealthy 3rd Duke of Alcalá, whose inventory of 1637 mentions a painting by Velázquez of 'a kitchen where a woman is pounding garlic' -- though there is no reference to the religious subject in the background. It has even been suggested that the Hospital de Santa Marta in Seville, the principal function of which was to feed the poor, may have provided Velázquez with the inspiration for this painting, and may even have commissioned it.

Style: Baroque
Christ carries the Cross on which he will be crucified. Blood drips down his forehead, which is pierced by the thorns with which he has been crowned by his tormentors. Christ raises his right hand. His arm and hand are foreshortened in such a way that they appear to project from the painting into our space. The meaning of the gesture is unclear; it is possibly intended as a sign of blessing. Christ looks slightly away from us to the left, as if turning to one of the holy women, or the Virgin Mary, who accompanied him on his journey.

A soldier grasps the rope looped about Christ's neck, his face and the reflection of his helmet emerging from the darkness. The head of another soldier is painted behind the Cross, at the top right of the picture; it was probably always half hidden in dark shadows, but is now barely visible except in very strong light. The emotional charge and drama of the painting are heightened by the tight cropping of the scene, Christ's gesture into our space and the extremes of light and dark.

Christ's long nose and widely-spaced eyes, the shape of his hand with its boneless tapering fingers, his piercing yet vulnerable expression and his arresting gesture are all also found in The Road to Emmaus, painted by Melone only a year or so later. The fine lines of light on the crinkled borders of the drapery and the highlights on the rounded ridges of the numerous folds of Christ's robes are typical of Melone's work of the 1510s.

The very fine wet-in-wet hatching used for the shadows of Christ's flesh and the soft down of his beard is similar to the way paint is used in fresco painting. Fresco dries quickly into the surface of the plaster, making it difficult to seamlessly blend areas of colour or shadow as one can with oil paint. Melone worked extensively in fresco, most notably in the scenes he painted in Cremona Cathedral, five of which were from Christ's Passion. In this painting he chose to employ a technique associated with fresco even though he was using more easily blended oils.

Bust-length paintings of Christ carrying the Cross had become popular in Venice and Lombardy by the end of the fifteenth century. There was a very famous painting of this subject in the church of S. Rocco in Venice of about 1505, attributed both to Giorgone and Titian, which was celebrated for the miracles it worked (now in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Venice). It also has a very dark, almost black, background.

Melone's painting, like the example in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, combines the carrying of the Cross with the traditional mocking of Christ, in which soldiers pull Christ's hair or raise their fists to strike him. Here the soldier's raised fist clasps the rope around Christ's neck.

Style: High Renaissance
In this altarpiece, Saint Paul is depicted with reed pen poised, gazing at the crucified Christ for inspiration. The Greek text he is writing is from his first Epistle to the Corinthians (13: 4): 'Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up'. His attribute, the sword by which he was martyred, rests against the table. He is represented three-quarter length with his body facing half to the right and his head almost in profile.

Through the open window we see a river valley, stretching into the distance past a town to far-off blue mountains. A barefoot pilgrim with holes in the knees of his trousers, his pack slung from his staff and his flask at his side, passes along the road, while in the distance another figure approaches the city gate. The figure of Christ on the Cross is set above this landscape against the cloudless blue sky. The shape of the Crucifix echoes the cross of the sword beneath it.

Saint Paul’s face and hands are precisely observed and were clearly painted from a model -- every crease and wrinkle around his eyes and forehead and each bone and tendon in his neck has been carefully recorded, revealing not only Sacchi's acute powers of observation but also his understanding of anatomy. The still life of objects on the table -- the black ink pot, carved lectern and leather-bound book -- have been precisely drawn and painted with the same attention to detail as the figure of the saint. The saturated jewel-like palette of red, blue and green in their purest forms adds to the sense that this oil painting, with its minute attention to detail, decorative quality and clarity of focus, resembles a precious manuscript illumination.

Sacchi’s interest in the art of antiquity is reflected in the relief of winged putti leading a ram on the lectern (a classical motif used to symbolise Christ's sacrifice) and in the faces in profile on the base of the Crucifix, which are drawn from Milanese decorative sources. His detailed, sharply delineated, naturalistic -- almost hyperreal -- style reveals an attention to and regard for Northern European painting. The close observation of natural history -- with plants, animals and reptiles minutely depicted -- is another characteristic of his work, which takes up influences and figurative sources derived from Lombardy, Liguria and Flanders.

This altarpiece is very similar in style and character to the Four Doctors of the Church (Louvre, Paris), which is signed by Sacchi and dated to 1516. However, Saint Paul Writing is a late work, probably dating from the 1520s; Sacchi died of plague in Albaro, just east of Genoa, in 1528.

Style: High Renaissance
The fourth scene of Hogarth's Marriage A-la-Mode takes place in the wife's bedroom. She is now  Countess:  an Earl's coronet above the bed informs us that the Earl of Squander must have died and that the young couple have lost no time displaying their new rank.

The Countess is sitting at her dressing table, the mirror of which is also surmounted with a coronet. She is following the aristocratic French fashion of receiving visitors during the final stage of her toilette (morning grooming ritual). Her hairdresser tests the heat of his curling tongs on a piece of paper. A coral baby's teether hangs from the back of the Countess's chair, indicating that she is now a mother and that she sees her child occasionally, though it does not appear until the final scene. The Countess does not look at herself in the mirror -- she only has eyes for her lover Silvertongue, who demonstrates his lack of manners and his privileged place in the house by putting his feet up on the sofa.

An opera singer, probably modelled on a famous Italian castrato singer, and his flautist entertain the Countess's guests while a manservant offers them cups of chocolate. A painting after Michelangelo's Rape of Ganymede above the man with horn-shaped curling papers in his hair may suggest his homosexuality -- it shows Jupiter in the form of an eagle abducting the beautiful young hero Ganymede. A large portrait of Silvertongue is prominently displayed beside the Countess's bed. On the other wall, above the Countess, are two paintings after Correggio. Io throws her head back in ecstasy in the embrace of Jupiter disguised as a cloud, and Lot's daughters get him drunk so he will sleep with them and perpetuate the human race. A collection of visiting and playing cards lie scattered on the floor from new aristocratic acquaintances inviting the Countess to various events.

Turning her back on her visitors, the Countess listens only to Silvertongue, who offers her a ticket to a masquerade. He gestures with his other hand to a painted screen on which Hogarth has depicted a masquerade in progress. He points to a couple dressed as a friar and a nun, as though suggesting that he and the Countess should adopt those disguises. Masquerades had become increasingly popular from the early eighteenth century

As continuing evidence of her bad taste, the Countess's recent purchases have been spread out before her, still bearing their auction lot numbers. She has purchased more items similar to those on the mantelpiece in Scene 2 and a dish decorated with Leda being seduced by Jupiter disguised as a swan. A little page boy holds a statue of Actaeon, whom the chaste goddess Diana transformed into a stag and then caused to be killed by his own hounds. The boy laughs as he points at Actaeon's antlers, which represent the horns of a cuckold (the husband of a woman who commits adultery) as the Countess has proved her husband to be.

Style: Baroque, Rococo, Georgian
A clue to the identity of the central figure in this painting lies in the carvings on the antique stone fragment -- probably the top of a marble altar -- against which he leans so nonchalantly. We can make out the top half of a coat of arms, divided in quarters with a saltire (X-shaped cross), next to a 'sun in splendour' (surrounded by stylised rays). This can be identified as the arms of the Gage family, from Firle in East Sussex; the ram’s head on the corner of the fragment belongs to the family crest.

This is a portrait of George Gage (about 1582–1638), an English Catholic priest, notable connoisseur of art and a political agent sent to Rome in 1621 by King James I to try to negotiate the Pope’s dispensation for the marriage of his son, the future Charles I, to the Spanish infanta, Maria Anna. Anthony van Dyck lived together with Gage in the same house in Rome in 1621 and 1622, and it is highly likely that the painting was made then. Despite six years of trying, Gage's negotiations with the pope failed and he concentrated on another of his specialities, acquiring paintings and antique sculptures for the great English collectors of the early seventeenth century.

Van Dyck has depicted Gage as a nonchalant English gentleman at ease in what may be intended to represent the portico of a classical villa in Rome. The man on the right, presumably a salesman who deals in antiquities, is clearly trying to interest Gage -- looking intently at him as he gestures towards the sculpture. Gage may look diffident, but he returns his gaze and seems about to speak. The black figure in the background is looking across them and directly at us; he holds the sculpture and is also pointing at it. We could interpret this in different ways: he may be indicating the significance of the piece, or perhaps he is trying to tempt us as prospective purchasers. Either way, we feel drawn into the negotiations.

Multiple changes in the composition reveal that the young Van Dyck took great care in developing this portrait of his friend: an irregularly shaped strip of canvas was sewn on to the main piece at the right-hand side later in the painting process; a draped curtain was replaced by architecture; and the faces of all three men and the costume of the attendant on the right were altered. Although no technical evidence has been found conclusively to support the idea, it nevertheless seems that some changes – especially in the figure on the right – date from after Van Dyck's lifetime.

The picture has a significant place in the history of art collecting in Britain. Once believed to show a portrait of Peter Paul Rubens, it was owned by the great eighteenth-century artist Sir Joshua Reynolds before being bought by John Julius Angerstein. After Angerstein's death, 38 of his pictures were bought by the British government to form the founding collection of the National Gallery in 1824.

Style: Baroque
In seventeenth-century Holland city dwellers displayed scenes of peasant life on the walls of their homes. They enjoyed idealised pastoral scenes or, in this case, the fun of looking at the various people and activities they may have seen on visits to the country.

Jan Lingelbach was increasingly influenced by the work of Philips Wouwerman, a successful and prolific artist whose paintings portrayed figures at work and on horseback and, like Lingelbach's, often featured a white horse. Each small group seems to invite interpretation of the story between them. Lingelbach has packed this picture with such incidents: a couple apparently asks the way, one boy tries to stop a dog fight and a man crouches behind a urinating horse.

Style: Baroque
Spring is the first of Teniers' allegorical paintings of the four seasons. The season is personified as a young gardener heaving a large pot containing a sapling. His step is jaunty and he has a gleam in his eye. His jacket looks new, and his red waistcoat and cap with the feather warm up the otherwise chilly background.

Overhead, wispy grey clouds bear the signs of April showers to come, while the trees in the background are leafless and windblown. A figure in a long gown and with a stick walks up the hill -- perhaps it is Winter making way for Spring.

Other gardeners dig the soil. They appear to have traced a pattern in the earth to follow when planting new trees, making a formal garden in the fashionable style set by French designers and followed with keen interest in Flanders.

Style: Baroque
The strong wind blowing towards us in this picture is almost tangible. Water roars and tumbles over bare rocks that jut up through the foam. The steep side of the hill falls on a diagonal across the space, lending the sensation that the earth might be sliding away. Clouds pile high and rush overhead, echoing the shape of the tossing trees below before they swirl and reform to make room for more, perhaps bringing gusts of rain. The herd of sheep looks small and vulnerable as it crosses a fragile-looking wooden bridge over a deep ravine, making for the shelter of the undergrowth on the hillside.

A hint of sun tries to warm the glinting rocks, but does little to soften the impact of the force of nature on the landscape. Only a distant mountain peak and the steeple pointing straight upwards to pierce the clouds give a little stability to the scene. It's a view that, 100 years later, the Romantic poet Shelley might have had in mind when he wrote, 'Oh wild West Wind, thou breath of autumn's being...'.

Jacob van Ruisdael was one of the greatest of the Dutch landscape artists of the seventeenth century. In this painting he is at his most evocative and atmospheric. The change in his work from a more pastoral style to a highly dramatic interpretation of mountainous landscapes and threatening weather came about in the mid- to late seventeenth century, when he moved to Amsterdam from Haarlem and met Allart van Everdingen. Van Everdingen had been to Scandinavia and brought back drawings and sketches of the waterfalls and mountains he saw there -- very different from the flat Dutch landscape. Van Ruisdael was immediately impressed by this fresh view of nature and began to produce pictures that were an imaginary version of this, to him, new terrain. Collectors shared his enthusiasm and he continued to be prolific and successful working in his new style.

About 100 years after van Ruisdael's picture was painted, it appeared in Self Portrait with J.A. Brentano by the Dutch artist Adriaan de Lelie (private collection). The two men are seen in a picture gallery packed with paintings floor to ceiling. Brentano, the collector, looking young and enthusiastic, leans forward over a desk by the artist's side holding a large manuscript, possibly a catalogue; van Ruisdael's picture is placed in a prominent position directly above de Lelie's head.

Style: Baroque
A group of smartly dressed men and women, accompanied by two dogs, talk among themselves. On the other side of the gently flowing river, peasants experience a very different life: they wash clothes and attend to cattle beside a rustic farmhouse. As a backdrop, this painting uses a rural village framed by trees and distant mountains, painted in thick brushstrokes of rich colour, as does its pendant, Landscape with a Group of Figures Fishing.

Guiseppe Zais moved to Venice in around 1725/30, where he spent nearly 50 years as a landscape painter. This is a late work of around 1770/80s. In 1774, after several attempts, Zais was accepted as a member of the Fraglia dei Pittori Veneziani, a prestigious society of artists working in Venice. His painting technique was inspired by Francesco Zuccarelli, whose Landscape with Figures and Cattle is also in the National Gallery's collection.

Style: Rococo, Neoclassical
The profile view, as depicted here, was for a long time the most popular way of showing someone in a portrait. By the time this was painted it had fallen out of fashion for men but not for women. This may be because it was seen as a more modest and less assertive pose.

This picture is not by Botticelli himself, but it resembles two of his pictures which show women in profile with elaborate hairstyles threaded through with jewels. These sumptuous details make it unlikely that these pictures were actual portraits: local laws about dress would not have allowed such luxurious ornaments and glamorous hairstyles. Portraits of this type are probably supposed to represent ideally beautiful women.

In fifteenth-century Florence the benchmark for the ideal woman came from the descriptions of a fourteenth-century Italian poet, Petrarch: golden ringlets, pale skin and rosy lips. The Medici, the ruling family in Florence, have often been associated with these images of blonde women with long curls, partly because of a poem written by poet Angelo Poliziano, the tutor of the Medici children. In it he describes the object of Giuliano de' Medici's affection, Simonetta Vespucci (whom he admired -- platonically -- for her beauty and virtue, although she was married to another man), as embodying all the qualities of ideal beauty.

Simonetta was admired for her character as well as her looks; in Renaissance thought the one mirrored the other. Painted portraits sometimes followed the format of portrait medals and had paintings on their reverses. Like modern-day coins, the reverse of portrait medals featured plant or animal motifs, and these told a story when deciphered. In the case of portrait medals of women, commissioned only by the most privileged and wealthy in society, the reverse would be cast with symbols that praised virtues like modesty and chastity. The reverse of this portrait is painted with a number of mysterious symbols: a winged figure stands at the top of a rocky crag carrying an astrolabe (an astronomical instrument) in one hand and a clump of moss or grass in the other. We don't know what these symbols refer to but it is most likely that they are intended to reflect the woman's good character.

Botticelli and his workshop produced numerous pictures of this kind as did his contemporaries working in Florence including Antonio and Piero Pollaiuolo and the workshop of Verrocchio.

Style: Early Renaissance
A bearded man gazes out intently from this painting. We don't know who the sitter is, but the cut of his beard and the fashion of his hat and clothing suggest a date towards 1530, and the fact that his doublet and gown are lined with fur probably indicates that the portrait was painted during the winter months. The pose, with the sitter's hands resting on a table placed at an angle, recurs in other, undated portraits by Gossart. He might be Italian: the painting was once owned by the dukes of Mantua. But Netherlandish painting was very fashionable at the Italian courts and dukes acquired pictures from many sources.

The painting was done at great speed with immense skill; perhaps neither sitter nor artist had much time to spare. The fur has been worked wet-in-wet, and the paint of the whites of the eyes has been feathered into the irises. Similarly, the pink paint of the cheek is feathered into the shadow cast by the nose, and the shadow cast by the fur at the collar is feathered into the white shirt.

The portrait is rather small and the panel is a single board of oak which was cut tangentially (across the width of the tree) rather than radially (from the outside edge in, like segments of an orange). This is unusual for Gossart's work and in Netherlandish panels of the period, but the painting is in good condition and Gossart may have realised that, for a panel of this size, the tangential cut would not cause problems. Unpainted wood and barbes, where the ground and paint end, survive on all four sides and indicate that the panel originally had an engaged frame that was in place before the ground was applied.

The portrait was in the collection of King Charles I, whose CR brand is on the back, and it hung in the Cabinet Room off the Privy Gallery in the Palace of Westminster. It was purchased by Charles from Mantua and must have belonged to Vincenzo II Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua. Charles must have thought highly of this portrait: although he did not know who had painted it and had no particular sympathy for early Netherlandish art, he chose to place it with some of the greatest treasures of his collection. It was presumably sold from the Royal Collection during the Commonwealth but it was recovered for Charles II.

Style: High Renaissance