wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
A young woman sits, one delicate hand outstretched and holding an almond to feed to a parrot. On one finger she has a thimble and on her knee is a piece of cloth and a needle pillow. She has stopped sewing to feed the bird that hunches over, assessing her gift. It's an African Grey. Its feathers glisten, its beady eye suddenly caught by the nut.

The young woman is dressed in sumptuous clothes -- a heavy, cream, satin skirt with a rose-pink velvet jacket edged with white fur. The skirt of the jacket fans out round her in deep folds, showing off the expensive trimming. Her fair hair is fashionably dressed, caught back with ribbon bows. Tendrils of hair tickle her forehead and rosy cheeks, and longer strands hang down to curl round her neck. She smiles slightly, with a distant look in her eyes as if her thoughts are elsewhere.

Van Mieris places the young woman in front of  a bed, with an open door hung with a climbing plant to the left. They are barely visible now, but if more distinct, they would make an openly intimate setting for this tender portrait. Perhaps, though, the extremely dark background does more to set off the soft colours and subtle lighting than a more cluttered background would do, leaving the young woman more alone with her thoughts.

In some Dutch paintings of this period the parrot had erotic connotations, but probably not in this picture. The bird is also sometimes seen as a symbol of 'eagerness to learn' since parrots can be taught to speak human words and phrases. In a contemporary illustration in a book of advice on marriage, a woman representing 'eagerness to learn' is shown with an embroidery frame in one hand and a parrot perched on the other.

Van Mieris was one of the most successful genre and portrait painters in the Dutch Republic at the time. He was celebrated as a fijnschilder, one of the Leiden 'school of fine painting', his technique learnt from his teacher Gerrit Dou. This tiny, exquisite painting was one of the most successful that van Mieris ever produced. He made three versions of it himself and it was copied many times by others. The painting is on copper, which makes his brushstrokes virtually invisible and allows him to achieve subtlety and realism in his portrayal of textures, from the bird's stiff feathers to the detail of the braid on the back of the young woman's chair.

The model used for the young woman is thought to be Cunera van de Cock, who married Frans van Mieris in 1657. A proper portrait of her by Mieris, Portrait of the Artist's Wife, Cunera van der Cock, shows an unmistakable likeness, though her plain clothes, veiled hair and serious expression show us a very different side to her character.

Style: Baroque
During his stay in Paris in the 1860s Monticelli began to paint fêtes galantes. This term derives from the pictures depicting elegantly dressed men and women, generally placed in a parkland setting and engaged in conversation, that became popular in eighteenth-century France, most often associated with Watteau. This group is typical of such a scene. The specific subject has not been identified, which is often the case with Monticelli’s late pictures. Three female figure are clearly distinguishable, while another figure, which may be male, stands in the background.

The panel is thickly painted: strong, horizontal strokes are used in the landscape, while the figures are built up with thinner, more dynamic brushwork. In some areas Monticelli seems to have applied many layers of different colours right on the surface, without mixing them first on the palette, using a wet-in-wet technique.

Style: Impressionist
In this picture, Willem van de Velde the Younger displays his skills as an exceptionally gifted painter of ships. Each vessel here is accurately depicted. An English ketch in the foreground flies the flag of Saint George, and a weyschuit (a small open boat) moves almost alongside it. To the left, broadside on, is a Dutch merchant ship with a smalschip, or smallship, nosing in beside it. In the distance are various craft of different sizes, capacity and purpose, all of which van de Velde has portrayed with the vigour and attention to detail his clients expected.

The sea is flat and calm. The boats are still, with almost no activity on board, and flags droop. But the low horizon allows for a wide sky with puffy clouds serenely drifting along, and gives space for the intricate geometry of masts, rigging and curved sails that bring life and vitality to the painting.

Style: Baroque
In 1999 this panel was reunited with its pair, an image of Christ known as the Man of Sorrows. Together they formed a diptych, a painting made of two panels joined with a hinge.

The Virgin Mary gestures towards the Christ Child, bowing her head towards him. He looks up towards her and makes a blessing gesture with his right hand; in his left, he holds a scroll. The way that his robes are wrapped around him make him look more like a Roman emperor than a baby. His face too, with its serious expression and lined forehead, makes him appear older. Many Italian paintings of this type show Christ's fingers arranged in a more western style of blessing (see, for example, The Virgin and Child with Six Angels) but the pose here, where the little finger is extended also, is particularly Byzantine. The Virgin's sorrowful expression and gesture towards Christ was intended to remind the viewer of Christ's suffering and death, reinforced by the image of the dead Christ on the other side of the diptych. The type usually also included angels in the upper corners; these now appear above the Man of Sorrows, covering their faces in grief.

This type of representation of the infant Christ is derived from Byzantine art, where there's an emphasis on his power and spiritual authority. The poses of the Virgin and Child also belong to Byzantine icon painting, specifically the Virgin Hodegetria (meaning, in Greek, the Virgin 'showing the way'). The original, now lost, was in the Hodegon monastery in Constantinople. The image was thought to have miracle-working properties, partly because it was thought to be based on a painting of the Virgin and Child made by Saint Luke. It became popular in Italy, in particular in Pisa, in the thirteenth century -- and the painter of this panel, known as the Master of the Borgo Crucifix, was probably trained by the Pisan artist Giunta da Pisano. A very similar painting of the Virgin and Child in the Hodegetria pose, which may be by a member of this artist's workshop, is now in the Pinacoteca Civica, Forlì, near Bologna.

Style: Gothic
Adriaen Brouwer worked in Antwerp from 1631. This painting used to be attributed to him, but is now believed to be by another, somewhat clumsier hand -- perhaps one of his apprentices imitating his style. The picture is similar to those usually depicted by Brouwer: humorous everyday scenes of peasants drinking or, sometimes, brawling, such as Tavern Scene.

In this example, however, the artist has set up a clear contrast between the three peasants lounging in the foreground -- one asleep, one drinking, one smoking -- and the vignette we can see through the open door. Here, three men are working hard, hoisting a heavy bale which is attached to a pulley suspended outside a house. The fourth peasant referred to in the title is hard to see, but appears to be a woman bent over her work in the shadows on the right.

Style: Baroque
There's an air of stillness in this large painting that is unusual in Jacob van Ruisdael's work. The clouds hang as if suspended over the forest and the leaves of the trees -- often restless in his other pictures -- are quiet, though by no means lifeless. Reflections tremble a little in the water, and although the woods seem dark and sombre, the colours in the picture are rich and lustrous.

The deep greens of the oaks that form a screen across the space are given life by the contrast of the gold leaves of the birch saplings growing out of the pool and the silvery bark of the dead tree on the right. Bushes push out of the shadows glowing with amber and gold, and nut-brown lichen grows on the fallen branch in the earthy water. A sudden view of stark, grey rock through the trees beyond the bank, where the clouds are at their heaviest, doesn't affect the tranquillity of the scene. Only the big white dog splashing through the shallows after the almost invisible hare does that -- but it'll soon be gone.

Also almost hidden are the two owners of the dog; they stand on the rise under the large oak, one above the other. One looks up at his companion and points at the dog with one arm. A single fleck of white paint suggests that there's another dog at his feet, waiting its turn to run. The twisted shape of the oak's trunk shows van Ruisdael's fascination with nature's many forms, but also his attention to detail in composition: the double 'S' bend of the tree serves to prevent the other vertical tree trunks from turning still to static. The little pond and its surroundings may be dark and perhaps a little melancholy, but there is still growth and fruitfulness and, with the occasional ripple, a suggestion of abundant life under the water. There are tiny, new reeds growing round the rotting tree trunk, and the pale spheres of waterlily buds sitting on their mossy green pads.

Van Ruisdael was probably the greatest of the Dutch seventeenth-century landscape painters. Prolific and successful, his paintings were highly sought after during his lifetime and his popularity never waned. This painting was once in the large collection of the nineteenth-century prime minister, Sir Robert Peel. A companion described him turning his head to look at it and wrote that it was 'as if its cool, dewy verdure, its deep seclusion, its transparent waters stealing through the glade had sent refreshment to his very soul'.

Style: Baroque
Three figures seem absorbed in making music. The young woman playing the lute has propped her score on a book on the table, though her eyes seem focused on the upraised hand of the man seated opposite her. He seems to have another copy of the music and is marking the beat. It is hard to way whether he is also singing, or whether he is perhaps teaching or directing her playing. Meanwhile a man in a cloak and hat stands behind, also focused on his friend’s conducting.

Such scenes of couples or small groups of people making music were common in seventeenth-century Dutch painting. They reflected a popular social activity among wealthy and sophisticated families and as such they might symbolise the harmony of family life or friendship groups. But such parties were also an accepted way for young men and women to meet and were often associated with flirtation and erotic encounters -- so much so that many song books of the time were exclusively devoted to love songs.

As a result, these paintings often have sexual overtones: a young woman may hold a phallic symbol and her dress may be not be entirely modest; her suitor might leans towards her eagerly; there might be aphrodisiacs like wine or tobacco in evidence. But in this painting, the relationship between the three characters has been left uncertain. There is no clear flirtation between them; their body language is neutral; the lutenist’s dress is suitably modest. The set up seems entirely respectable.

A couple of subtle clues might tempt us towards a conclusion, however. There is a bed in the background -- perhaps this is also on the minds of the protagonists -- and a spaniel has wandered in through the open door; is he a symbol of animal lusts, or just a much-loved pet? On the floor under the table is a playing card: the ace of spades. Card games were often associated with vice, and especially with seduction (though generally the ace of hearts was used to signal this theme). It’s only a hint, but it is enough at least to set our minds wondering about what is going on behind the inscrutable expressions of the musicians.

It's important to keep in mind that the situation is not a portrait of 'real' people in a 'real' situation. Ter Borch -- who specialised in such scenes of small groups of people set in elegant interiors -- composed this from elements he had used before. For example, the spaniel appears in several of his paintings, including another in the National Gallery: An Officer dictating a Letter. The woman and the central man appear separately in the same poses but in different company, and the silver box and candlestick on the table also appear elsewhere.  

As well as his ability to create an air of mystery, ter Borch was also particularly admired for his ability to capture the textures of fabrics. Here he contrasts the sheen on the lutenist’s soft satin jacket and dress with the matt weave and complex patterns of the heavy Turkish carpet which is draped over the table.  

Style: Baroque
A young woman, her blouse and jacket falling open immodestly at the front, has drifted to sleep in her chair. In one hand is an empty wine glass, in the other, looking as though it might slip out of her fingers at any moment, is a clay pipe. The man who has crept up close behind her blows a stream of smoke towards her ear, while another looks on laughing. He is holding a pipe and tankard in his hand, so we might assume that this is a tavern scene. But just behind him are the curtains of a bed -- it's more likely we are in a brothel, where the sleeping woman works.

To modern viewers this sort of leering mockery might not make a very attractive scene. But in seventeenth-century Holland, when indulging in alcohol and tobacco was considered a potential risk to a woman’s sexual virtue, it would have been a source of justified derision or, as here, amusement. Steen's paintings are full of visual jokes -- he preferred to use humour to expose dissolute behaviour, rather than high indignation. So this is probably an example of a joke which seems a little sour today but which would have been perfectly acceptable 350 years ago.

In fact, the central image -- a woman who has fallen asleep after drinking and/or smoking too much -- was repeated in other paintings by Steen, notably The Effects of Intemperance. Several of his other pictures show smokers, apparently befuddled by the effects of tobacco, being robbed. And grinning men offering women a pipe -- apparently as an aid to seduction -- appear in several other works.

Today, while we can understand why there might have been concern about the debilitating effects of alcohol, tobacco seems relatively harmless as a vice. But in Steen’s time, when it had only been in widespread use for a couple of generations, it had a reputation as a powerful intoxicant and it was associated with both idleness (and the sin of sloth) and sexual incontinence (adultery). Blowing smoke was also directly connected with lewdness, probably because the act of blowing had such associations even before tobacco was in regular use. Albrecht Dürer’s engraving The Temptation of the Idler (about 1498) shows a naked woman standing by a scholar who has fallen asleep in his study, while a devil blows into his ear with a pair of bellows.

By the 1660s, when this painting was made, tobacco’s image in Holland was slowly changing. Amsterdam and Rotterdam were the two most important continental ports importing tobacco from the Americas and there was a thriving processing industry in both cities. Meanwhile, it was being cultivated in Utrecht, and Gouda had become a centre of pipe manufacturing. As it became more economically important, there was vested interest in promoting its use as a more respectable recreational drug. That is clearly not the implication in this picture, however. Steen may want to make us laugh, but he has a serious, cautionary message too.

Style: Baroque
Elderly Saint Elizabeth looks down over the Virgin Mary's shoulder at her son John the Baptist. Before miraculously conceiving him in old age, Saint Elizabeth was unable to have children. The Christ Child removes a garland of flowers from his head, symbolising innocence or childish pleasure. He grasps the reed cross held by the infant Saint John the Baptist, who wears his camel-skin cloak and carries a baptismal bowl (when Christ is an adult, his cousin John will use the bowl to baptise him in the river Jordan).

The reed cross foreshadows the Crucifixion, and by grasping it Christ accepts his destiny to die for the salvation of humanity. The wild strawberries Saint John offers may refer to Christ's fruitful and righteous life, and their colour may also be a reminder of the blood he spilled during the Passion.

The picture was painted around 1540, perhaps for an acquaintance of Bronzino's at the court of Duke Cosimo I de' Medici in Florence. It is close in style to the frescoes Bronzino painted in the Chapel of Eleonora of Toledo (the Duke's wife) in the Palazzo Vecchio in around 1541--2. In his Lives of the Artists, Vasari described 'two large pictures of Our Lady with other figures, beautiful to behold, and carried out with infinite diligence' that Bronzino painted for Bartolomeo Panciatichi. The first of these, which includes a flag of the Panciatichi arms, is in the Uffizi, Florence, as is a portrait of Panciatichi by Bronzino. It has been suggested that the National Gallery's painting may be the other Madonna painted for Panciatichi, although it is not of the same very high quality as the Uffizi picture.

The rocky background provides little sense of depth, making the figures seem very close to the picture's surface, like a relief sculpture. In 1546, Benedetto Varchi, a Florentine intellectual, asked the leading artists of his time about the relative merits of the arts of painting and sculpture -- a debate known as the paragone. Although defending painting, Bronzino's unfinished reply shows that he was particularly interested in sculpture. He claimed that painting was the finest of the arts because it could both evoke the three-dimensional qualities of sculpture and imitate nature in a way that sculpture could not. The 'sculptural' style of painting that Bronzino favoured is evident here in the figures, the clearly outlined forms and the cool, flawless quality of his brushwork.

In 1914 it was noted that the remains of a signature were still visible. It read 'B.ONZO FL..ETINO', which stood for 'Bronzino Florentino', meaning Bronzino from Florence.

Style: High Renaissance, Mannerist
The story of Eurydice and Aristaeus is told by the Roman poet Virgil (Georgics, IV) and was retold by the fifteenth-century Italian lyric poet Poliziano in his Orfeo. Niccolò dell’Abate has approached the composition as a continuous narrative -- he has shown episodes of the story all together even though they occurred at different times.

In the far distance Orpheus, Eurydice's husband, charms the animals with his music. A leopard, stag, boar, lion and even a unicorn have gathered to listen to him playing his lyre. In the central foreground, three nymphs are gathering flowers, unaware that the shepherd Aristaeus is pursuing Eurydice. She is bitten by a snake as she runs away. Slightly to the right, Eurydice -- identifiable by her blue drapery -- appears again, lying dead on the ground. In the middle distance, Aristaeus consults his mother Cyrene concerning the death of his bees. The male figure with the overflowing urn lying on the ground to the extreme right is the sea-god Proteus, who explained to Aristaeus that the disaster in the hives was a punishment for his pursuit of Eurydice.

This picture was probably painted in France, where Niccolò worked from 1552 onwards. Documents at the Royal Château of Fontainebleau, which was once owned by the kings of France, record that he painted several large landscapes for the king's study. This painting is not specifically mentioned, although it may have been among the ‘eight large landscapes’ recorded in the 1692 inventory of the Cabinet of Paintings at Fontainebleau.

The landscape is truly spectacular. Golden clouds filter sunlight and shadow across a multitude of fantastic classical buildings, spires and columns to magical effect. The glassy surface of the sea is shrouded in mist in the distance where it meets the slopes of the snow-covered mountains. Clusters of houses nestle among thickets of trees and vegetation, which cling to the shore and sprout from rocky hillsides. Water, mountains, land, plants and buildings are combined harmoniously, bathed in streaks of warm golden sunlight or cast in deep shade.

The extensive landscape shows the influence of Dosso Dossi, who during the 1520s and 1530s painted delicate dreamlands lit by an unearthly light and populated by small mythological characters. The mythological paintings Niccolò dell’Abate produced in France marry the landscape with the figures in a way that expresses the emotional content of the story. Although this was an approach employed by earlier Italian artists, it was quite new in French art and anticipated the classicising landscapes of the seventeenth-century French artists Poussin and Claude.

Style: High Renaissance, Mannerist
Christ wears the rich cloak and the crown of thorns in which, according to the Gospels, he was dressed before he was crucified -- but the wounds of the Passion (his torture and crucifixion) indicate that he has already died and been resurrected. The burnished gold background tells us that he is now in a heavenly rather than an earthly realm.

Dirk Bouts has painted every agonising detail: the blue shadows of the thorns thrust deep into his forehead, and those around the holes in his hands; his translucent tears mingled with the blood dripping down his face. This graphic image might seem shocking now, but in the late fifteenth century images of the weeping and suffering Christ were very popular, and were produced in large numbers in the workshop of Bouts and his followers. The quality of this painting and the skill with which the artist has worked wet into wet paint to achieve the details of the jewels, the embroidery and the crown suggest it is by Bouts himself. Its painting technique is similar to that of Portrait of a Man (Jan van Winckele?).

Small devotional paintings like this were used to aid private prayer. The painting was clearly intended to be seen close up, and the level of detail draws us deeper and deeper in. We can see every hair in Christ's beard and eyebrows, and the tears in his red-rimmed eyes. The gold background is flecked with painted dots and hatched lines, making a halo of gold, red, green and blue rings around Christ's head.

The painting's focus on Christ's body was intended to remind Christian viewers that God became man and died on the Cross for humanity's sake. Popular religious movements of the late fifteenth century held that meditation on the pain of the Passion offered a route to salvation. In the Netherlands Devotio Moderna ('Modern Devotion', a religious movement which focused on personal spirituality rather than church ritual) encouraged meditation on the pain inflicted by the crown of thorns. Thomas à Kempis, an important early member of the movement, wrote a prayer to the head of Christ describing the 'most grievous sufferings which, in the thorny coronation of your sacred head, you endured for us'.

Joseph Henry Green, an eminent surgeon and friend of poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, owned the painting in the nineteenth century. It was left to the National Gallery by Green's wife.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance