Tura became the favoured court artist of the Este family in the late 1450s. He was paid a monthly salary to paint anything from heraldry to fresco cycles. He also designed silverware & tapestries. He was the foremost painter of a series of pictures of the Muses for a 'studiolo' or study at the Este castle of Belfiore near Ferrara. This picture is thought to be one of the series. It would have been displayed high up in a room, hence the low vanishing-point. There are a number of pictures by Tura & associated artists which are thought to be part of the set. Underneath the figure, which is painted in oils, is an earlier painting in tempera, of a figure on a throne of organ pipes. This was probably Euterpe 'discoverer of pipes'. Identifications can be difficult because Tura did not stick closely to his brief. The theme of fertility suggests that the final figure may be Polyhymnia, the muse who discovered the cultivation of the fields. ...

The depiction of elegantly dressed people singing & playing music often refers to courtship & the harmony of love. The pleasures of music are set against those of food, wine & tobacco. With the exception of one portrait, van Velsen painted only genr ...

The woman is playing a viola da gamba; the man with his back to the viewer, a lute; the man on the right, a flute; & the standing man, a violin. A figure of a boy in the background was painted out when the painting was cleaned in 1969-70, because it was ...

The woman on the left is playing a viola da gamba. The houses seen across the canal are similar to those on the Keizersgracht, Amsterdam. The left-hand one bears a tablet with the date 1620 & is in the style of Hendrick de Keyser (1565
- 1621). The pain
...

The young man seated on the left is playing a theorbo; in front of him on the floor is its case. In the centre of the wall behind the figures is a landscape with a carved gilt frame &, on the left, a wall-sconce. This painting is a copy of a composition by Caspar Netscher, the original (or best version) of which is signed & dated 1665 (Munich, Alte Pinakothek). There are a number of other replicas or copies of this design. ...

The man who kisses the lady wears the black robes & wig of a Venetian nobleman. He has been described as a Procurator of S. Marco, but there is no firm evidence for this. The servant at the left is bringing coffee on a tray. The work may date from the sa ...

The model for this painting was Lise Tréhot, who was Renoir's frequent model & companion during these years. She also posed for the presumed companion to this painting, ' Woman of Algiers' (Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art), in which she is depicted reclining on her back & clothed in a rich oriental costume. Here, Renoir associates the female nude seen in nature with the forces of nature itself, represented by the stream near which she lies. This was a traditional theme in French art, & in the mid-19th century it was also explored by such artists as Ingres & Courbet. ...

This work is an elaborated copy of a mysterious ancient rite described on a sculpture in the strange antiquarian romance ' Hypnerotomachia Poliphili' (Dream of Poliphilus) which was published in Venice in 1499. ...

The painting has been entitled ' Daphnis & Chloe', presumably because the man's tentative advances suggest the problems which this pair of lovers had, as related in the Greek pastoral romance of that title by Longus, probably of the 3rd century AD. But many other subjects are possible. Probably painted in Venice in the 1540s. ...

This type of elegant interior with a group of well-dressed people enjoying themselves around a table is known as a 'merry company'. Such examples derive from representations of biblical subjects, for example, the Prodigal Son Feasting, & were often engraved with moralising verses which condemned foolish behaviour. In the left background is a map; on the wall to the right is a painting representing the Betrayal of Christ. Dirck Hals was the brother of the famous Haarlem painter Frans Hals, whose work is also represented in the National Gallery's Collection. ...