wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
An elderly couple stare past each other -- and us -- in this astonishing study of old age. Although prosperously dressed, the pair seem disappointed: their mouths are turned resolutely down, their eyes dull and their jowls sagging. The man clutches rather desperately at his fur collar and his staff, while his wife gazes vacantly into the middle distance.

Although they overlap, each figure makes a self-contained triangle; their isolation is in vivid contrast to the classical lovers in the cameo in the man's hat. The naked couple embrace in front of a tree; he seems to be holding a staff, she a cornucopia. They could be Mercury and Fortuna, the gods of trade and prosperity, referring to the sitters' worldly success, or possibly the lovers Venus and  Mars -- a bitter commentary on lost youth and passion.

Although the woman is depicted behind the man, and although in reality her head was probably not as large his, her face is only very slightly smaller. She appears to be the younger and stronger of the two. She still has most of her teeth, while he has lost his; she is tidily dressed while he is dishevelled and poorly shaven, with fallen hairs curling around the ribbons of his hat and on his fur collar. She makes a bolder pattern of simple shapes, while his contours, as well as his body, are crumpled. He is shrinking -- literally, for his body is much too small in proportion to his head. Though the two may not be communicating, she appears to buttress his shrivelled form.

The only indication of their identity is in their clothing. The man's hat badge, which was probably created by Gossart, may nevertheless suggest that he took an interest in classical antiquity. His silver-topped staff and fur-lined gown show that he is prosperous. The cap with its two trailing ribbons is of a type found fairly frequently in North Netherlandish portraits: it was perhaps a North Netherlandish fashion to wear such hats, which might have denoted a certain status. Their clothes were in fashion in the 1510s but, given their age, they may not have kept up with the latest fashions.

Unusually, the painting is on parchment, perhaps to make it easier to transport. It might not have been painted for the sitters, but for some distant friend or relative. The heads were painted in different ways -- the woman's was carefully underdrawn and there were few changes in the final paint layer, while the man's is more sketchy with many alterations; he may have been painted after the woman. The pair may never have seen the finished painting, may never have been aware of Gossart's merciless observation of their agedness or the pitiful contrast between the young gods on the hat badge and their own physical state.

Style: High Renaissance
Adriaen van de Velde’s pastoral scenes are, like this one, almost always tranquil and serene; the animals he portrayed are well tended and the surroundings pleasing. Buildings are old, often perhaps a little ramshackle, but clean and tidy, and seeming to hold a sense of history.

These were pictures designed to be easy to live with, and to give a city dweller a sense of being in touch with the countryside and traditional life. In this they were successful and so was van de Velde in his time. But although the paintings are tranquil there's a sense of energy and movement hidden within them, and it's a key part of their appeal.

In this picture, the bay horse is placed centrally, statuesque and seemingly unmoving, but the strong, swooping line of its back against the skyline dominates the picture and hints at the animal’s power. The line leads the eye past its feathery mane ruffled In the wind, and up to the fast moving clouds overhead. One of them catches the sun as it edges between the darker clouds that move away on either side of it to make way for the sparkling blue of the sky. Trees rustle in the wind on the right, and on the left, loose tiles and a chimney pot break the sharp diagonal silhouette of the roof of the house. The cow and the goat may be static, but van de Velde has made the light play over them in such a way that they appear to be about to move -- a shift of the head, the flick of a tail. Water flows from a pipe, almost hidden in the shadows behind the cow, making a small torrent that adds to the life and freshness of the picture.

Although he died young, van de Velde left a large number of paintings as well as many elegant, sensitive drawings, mostly in red chalk. He would put many of the figures and animals that he had drawn into his paintings, using them several times over. The cow in this painting appears in The Migration of Jacob (Wallace Collection, London) and the goat also appears in A Goat and a Kid.

Adriaen Van de Velde was the younger brother of the marine artist Willem van de Velde the Younger. They worked together in the studio of their father, Willem van de Velde the Elder, also a marine artist. Adriaen chose to become a landscape artist rather than concentrate on seascapes like his brother, though he sometimes provided the figures and animals in Willem’s pictures, notably in The Shore at Scheveningen. Sharing the making of a painting in this way was common practice in seventeenth-century Holland.

Style: Baroque
The Virgin and Christ Child are painted in fresco, a technique that involved painting directly onto fresh plaster. The Virgin's mantle would originally have been a much more vivid shade of blue.

This once belonged to Austen Henry Layard, archaeologist and explorer. He was a founder of the Arundel Society, which aimed to document frescoes in Italian churches and palaces through drawings and art-historical descriptions.

When it was in Layard's collection an inscription on its modern frame noted that it was from the choir of the church at Magrè, near Schio in the province of Vicenza -- but we don't know now what the evidence for this suggestion may have been. The painting was once thought to be by Giovanni Bellini or one of his followers, but now the suggestion of Montagna seems more likely. Montagna was from Vicenza, but the fragment is so damaged that it's not possible to be certain who painted it.

Style: Early Renaissance
At the age of 12, Jesus was taken to the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem for the Jewish holiday of Passover by Mary and Joseph. On their way home, Mary and Joseph became accidentally separated from Jesus and did not realise that he had stayed behind at the Temple. He was found three days later debating learnedly with the theologians there (Luke 2: 41). Everyone who heard him was amazed by his answers. When Mary saw Jesus, she asked him, 'Son, why have you treated us so? Behold your father and I have been searching for you in great distress.' This is the moment at which we hear Christ’s first recorded words in Scripture, with which he identifies himself as the son of God: ‘Why are you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?’

In Luini’s painting Jesus looks at us serenely as he counts the points of his argument off on his fingers. He is surrounded by four elderly theologians who clutch their books and turn to one another, doubting Jesus’s words. His idealised, delicate features contrast with the rough lined faces of the old theologians. Luini has not included the Temple or any setting at all. Hemmed in on both sides, Jesus seems to shine forth from the darkness, as the new Light of the World. This use of extremes of light and dark to heighten the drama of a scene is known in Italian as chiaroscuro, with Luini imitating Leonardo da Vinci's 's sfumato -- his way of dissolving form into the surrounding darkness in the manner of smoke. The picture is sometimes thought to show the adult Christ disputing with the Pharisees, as he looks older than 12 – the fine down of a new beard is growing on his upper lip and chin.

The painting was previously believed to be by Leonardo himself, and may be based on an original design by him. The facial type of Christ, the soft smoky style of painting, and the grotesque physiognomy of the figure in profile to the right are particularly associated with Leonardo’s work. In 1504 Isabella d’Este, Marchioness of Mantua, had asked Leonardo to paint a picture of the twelve-year-old Jesus in the Temple – it may have been this painting that Luini knew.

There are numerous versions of this picture, some of a quality comparable to this one -- the composition was enormously famous. The German artist Dürer’s Christ among the Doctors of 1506, painted while he was in Venice (now in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid), may also have been inspired by Leonardo’s composition. In Dürer’s version Christ appears younger and completely hemmed in by the Pharisees, the grotesque features of whom are even more pronounced.

There is a later copy of the figure of Christ from Luini's painting also in the National Gallery's collection. Luini's work was very popular due to his association with Leonardo, and was frequently copied after his death.

Style: High Renaissance
Stables were found everywhere in the seventeenth century -- but this is no ordinary one. A peacock is perched on a branch at the entrance. Outside, there's part of a weathered but grand building; birds nest on its roof and climbing plants drift over windows. The entrance and the trees give an air of age and continuity. All are clues to the kind of establishment this is: the stable of an old aristocratic household, with its many grooms, stable boys and coachmen.

At first, it seem almost too dark to see the cavernous inside of the stable -- as if you need to take a moment for your eyes to adjust to the shadows, as you would if you were there. The spirited white pony with the scarlet rosette and the black blot on its rump grabs our attention. It paws the ground, its princely little head nods; its mane looks almost blow-dried into crisp waves. The lush yellow jacket and hat with curled feathers worn by the mounted horseman beside the pony is the next bright spot of colour to catch the eye. He leans to the side to bring his horse to a halt and seems to glance down at the transaction going on below him -- a visitor, perhaps, tipping one of the stable boys for looking after his mount.

Outside, on the left, a woman gets water from a well; Wouwerman draws attention to the detail of the pulley overhead by her raised hand. A horse is led into the stable, and behind it a fine grey mare carries in a woman wearing silk, lace and feathers. On the far right side of the space, chickens cluck about for scraps and more horses wait their turn to be groomed. But there's fun to be had in the stable too: a lad, probably the son of a stable boy, rides a frisky goat, while a woman tends its kid.

Wouwerman seems to have enjoyed using rich but subtle colours to paint scenes that give the viewer lots to discover, to interpret, and to discuss and return to. His skill in the portrayal of horses was supreme -- his favourite, the white horse, appears in many of his pictures (look at A White Horse and an Old Man binding Faggots and Two Horsemen at a Gipsy Encampment, One having his Fortune told). This skill and his ability to capture the genuinely expressive movement of the human body and face brought him enormous popularity in his own time and long after, and can still delight today.

Style: Baroque
Claude was a prolific painter of seascapes, and this is one of three imaginary seaports owned by the National Gallery. The subject of this painting is identifiable only by the artist's inscription, barely visible on the stone step to the right. According to the Old Testament, the Queen of Sheba went to visit King Solomon in Jerusalem (1 Kings 10: 1--2). Crowned and dressed in red, the Queen is descending the steps on the right. The meeting was often painted, but it was unusual to depict the Queen's embarkation. In the Bible, she travels across the desert by camel, but Claude sends her by sea.

The scene is bathed in the soft warm light of sunrise, capturing the gentle ripples of the water, undersides of the clouds and foliage, and silhouettes of the boats. There is hurried activity involving groups of figures: in the foreground two men carry a chest, while other figures prepare to row the Queen and her companions towards the larger ships used for the voyage. The classical buildings inspired by Claude's time in Rome create a symmetrical and balanced scene. Columns support a balcony decorated with sculptures, from which figures watch the scene below. The bystanders on the bridge behind are conveyed through single dots of paint. The variety of the shells scattered along the bottom of the painting reflects Claude's attention to the most intricate details.

This painting was inspired by several earlier Claudes: the composition is shown in reverse in Embarkation of Saint Ursula, also owned by the National Gallery, and Seaport with Ulysses restoring Chrysalis to her Father (Louvre, Paris). Seaport with the Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba and its pair, Landscape with the Marriage of Isaac and Rebecca, were painted in 1648 for the Duc de Bouillon (1605--1652), a French general in the Papal army. The patron's name is  inscribed on the last stone step in the bottom right corner, suggesting his interest in this story. He may have meant a connection to be made between King Solomon in Jerusalem and his ancestor, Godefroy de Bouillon (1060--1100), briefly the ruler of Jerusalem at the end of the eleventh century. Although commonly found in Claude’s paintings, the round tower  included in both paintings was the principal emblem of the Duc de Bouillon, whose family name was De la Tour d’Auvergne (the Tower of Auvergne). A shield with a coat of arms is attached to the top of the tower, although it is hard to see the details. The Bouillon coat of arms was inscribed with words from the Song of Solomon, which further connects the duke with Solomon.

These paintings were among the first to be bought for the National Gallery in 1824, from the prestigious collection of John Julius Angerstein (1735--1823). Claude's work was highly regarded by later artists: J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851) bequeathed his two paintings Sun rising through the Vapour and Dido building Carthage to the Gallery on the condition they hung next to Claude's two paintings in perpetuity.

Style: Baroque, Academic
Far from the soft, rolling sand dunes at many seaside places, those in Wouwerman's painting are craggy with rocks here and there. The stark outline of the broken fence against the sky seems forbidding, and the house up on the left bank, gable end facing us, seems to shut us out. In a hollow down by the stream a blackened plant struggles up the side of the dune.

Individual parts of the painting listed in this way might make it seem unappealing, but the warm yellows of the softer sand between the rocks and the sensation of the clouds moving away to reveal the dawn light save it from being bleak and uninviting. Even more, the two small figures in the water give the picture a playful air rare in Wouwerman's dune paintings. These are often full of incident and humour, but don't often show such apparently spontaneous frolicsome moments -- and rarely have figures in the open air almost naked (for a comparison, look at A View on a Seashore with Fishwives offering Fish to a Horseman).

Wouwerman lived in Haarlem for the whole of his professional life. He knew the dunes between the town and the nearby sea well, and painted them often. Even so, he added imaginary details, such as the distant high hill in the distance, to this picture. The white streak on top presumably represents chalky soil, although it looks almost like snow. We are meant to suppose that the sea is just around the corner of the stream. Wouwerman often used the device of a triangular piece of land, looking rather like a cut-out piece of scenery on a stage, jutting into a space to give the picture depth -- as he did here. He painted the shifting sand with a light impasto (paint applied roughly and left slightly proud of the support) so it looks as if it is trickling down the slope of the dune.

This is not the cool Northern sky to be expected over a Dutch scene. The warm light is borrowed from the work of artists who had returned from visits to Rome to paint landscapes with softly lit, radiant skies. Wouwerman managed a happy marriage between the two styles, softening the tough Dutch realism but not overstating the golden glow of the Italianate style, to produce paintings -- mainly of landscapes but also of battle scenes -- which were extremely successful in his own time.

Style: Baroque
In contrast to many of Turner's paintings -- often full of activity, grand architectural settings, dramatic weather and dazzling displays of colour and light -- this is reduced to its most fundamental elements: day and night, land and sea, earth and sky.

Yet the picture has a subtle construction. Three near-symmetrical vertical markers -- the posts in the sea, the bright reflection of the star on the water and the young boy who wades in from the shoreline to be greeted by a small leaping dog -- give structure to the space around them. They also create a diagonal rising from right to left that leads our eye to the distant horizon, where an inky black sea meets white clouds.

The title of this painting was not chosen by Turner, but appears to have been given to it around 1906 while an inventory of the Turner Bequest (the gift of his paintings he left to the nation in his will) was being compiled. Some 11 lines of verse scribbled by Turner in a sketchbook he was using around 1829--30 (probably when this painting was made), include the phrases: ‘Where is the star which shone at … Eve / The gleaming star of Ever … [or Eve] / The first pale Star of Eve ere Twylight comes …’. The words reveal Turner’s attempt to find a poetic language to describe the sequence of the ‘pale’ evening star being overpowered by the more ‘powerful ray’ of the moon.

Even if these lines do not relate directly to this painting, they show that he was keenly interested in transitional moments, such as twilight or dawn, when one period of the day or night is superseded by the next. The star itself is a tiny dab of thick white paint. The ghostly trace of a boat to the right of centre, which has been painted over, suggests that Turner decided to emphasise the vastness of the sky and sea rather than human industry.

Although the painting was originally thought by critics to be unfinished, it is possible that Turner was in fact satisfied with its evocation of a particular moment and did not see any need for additional work on it.

Style: Romantic, Georgian
The accessories worn by the man in this portrait reveal not only his age but also his rank and the city in which he lived: the tunic, cap and stole -- the strip of black fabric across his chest -- indicate that he was a member of the Venetian togati. The term refers to this Roman style of dress which was the uniform of Venetian citizens or patricians (the two highest social orders in Venice) over the age of 25. The strip of grey in the man’s fringe and the prominence of the veins on his left hand suggest that he is probably a little older than this. The colour of his tunic is also significant: Venetian men could only wear red tunics if they belonged to the city’s councils and it is possible that this man was a magistrate.

It may seem unusual for a man of such high social rank with such a serious role in society to choose to be painted holding a pink -- a type of carnation. Renaissance artists often included objects, flowers or even animals to communicate meaning. These could derive from local, secular or religious customs and would have been easily understood by viewers at the time. Pinks featured in marriage rituals: on her wedding day, a bride would hide a pink in her clothing and the groom would have to search her to find it. By holding the flower here, the man may be proclaiming his success in this endeavour. With his other hand, he clutches his stole in a way that shows off the blue and gold ring on his thumb. These clues suggest that the man ordered the painting to commemorate his marriage.

This man's hands -- what he holds and wears -- are key to understanding the painting. The use of the innovative three-quarter pose, where the sitter is turned from profile towards the viewer, made it possible for Solario to depict the man's hands. Artists, like Solario, working in and around Venice were the first to adopt this pose which originated in Northern European portraiture. Netherlandish artists like Memling were also the first to include hands in bust-length portraits, and to paint their clients as though they were sitting in an open landscape.

These settings made the portrait more beautiful and allowed the painter more scope to show off his skill. Solario has used a variety of techniques to give the impression of the vast countryside in the distance: the two trees that frame the man’s face mark out the centre ground; a river weaves through the fields behind the man’s right shoulder leading the eye towards the mountain range beyond. The bluish tone of the mountains tricks the eye into thinking they are miles behind the sitter for, as Leonardo realised, distance changes the way that colours appear so that far-off mountain ranges seem blue, rather than green. Solario, who was from Milan, may have learnt this technique, called aerial perspective, from works made by Leonardo for that city such as, for example The Virgin of the Rocks.

Style: Early Renaissance