wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
The subject of Giampietrino's painting is taken from the New Testament (Mark 6: 22--9). Salome is being presented with the head of Christ’s cousin, Saint John the Baptist, which she has been granted by King Herod as a reward for her dancing. She turns away as though she cannot bear to look at the severed head that the swarthy executioner dangles by its hair above her dish. She seems to gaze toward someone outside the picture -- perhaps her mother, Herodias, who ordered her to request the Baptist’s execution. Herodias held a grudge against him for saying that her marriage to Herod, her husband's brother, was unlawful.

The figure of Salome is based on a lost drawing of Leda and the Swan by Leonardo and the strong chiaroscuro is also influenced by him. The figure appears again, this time nude, in Giampietrino’s Suicide of Cleopatra in the Louvre, Paris. The same cartoon was evidently used for both pictures. When superimposed on one another, the figures are almost exactly aligned apart from the outstretched arm. The figure of the executioner in Salome seems less convincingly constructed, which may be because he has been fitted into a pre-existing composition.

Giampietrino was one of a group of Milanese painters -- including Boltraffio, Bramantino, Cesare da Sesto and Luini -- who adopted Leonardo’s manner, incorporating his motifs and emulating his painterly effects. This picture is typical of Giampietrino’s work; he often painted small-scale half-length representations of biblical scenes, frequently in multiple versions. The strong contrasts of light and shade and the dark backgrounds of Giampietrino’s small panels are an attempt to copy the striking effects of Leonardo's paintings. We do not know how much contact Giampietrino actually had with Leonardo’s painting methods and we can’t assume that his imitation of Leonardo’s effects was based on knowledge of his techniques.

Changes in the materials over the 500 years since the painting was made have affected its appearance. The stripes on the tablecloth, which are now a deep rust colour, were once a rich green. The green pigment verdigris is particularly subject to changes over time. The loss of the green has changed the balance with the other red, pink and brown tones of the picture.

Fading of the red lake pigment has also altered the appearance of Salome’s flesh. While some colour remains in her face, her complexion is unnaturally pale; it was probably once much more pink. A semi-transparent undergarment passing across Salome’s shoulders and over her breast is now very difficult to see because of these changes. The sense of contrast has also been lost between the delicate flesh of Salome, the swarthy complexion of the executioner and the deathly pallor of the head of Saint John the Baptist.

Style: High Renaissance
Johann the Steadfast, elector of Saxony from 1525 to 1532, would have been about 38 when this portrait was made. He wears a sumptuous black hat and coat, both decorated with gold thread and seed pearls. The collar of his white shirt is embroidered with more gold thread and pearl beads. A large gold brooch, studded with precious stones and in the shape of a cross, is pinned to his hat, and a large black feather protrudes from its edge. Gold and jewelled rings adorn his finger and his thumb.

This panel is part of a diptych (a painting made of two parts) -- the conjoining panel depicts Johann’s son, Johann Friedrich the Magnanimous. Traditionally, portrait diptychs would show a man and his wife, or a recently engaged couple, but Johann’s wife, Sophie of Mecklenburg, had died in childbirth. Ten years after Sophie's death, Johann married Margaret of Anhalt-Köthen, with whom he had four children.

Johann the Steadfast inherited the title of elector after the death of his brother, Friedrich the Wise. As his name suggests, Johann gave support to the Protestant cause, as his brother had done before him. He was an early supporter of Martin Luther, the religious reformer who helped to promote the spread of the Protestant Reformation. He acted as Luther’s patron and protector during the reformer’s political exile. In 1527 he established a Lutheran church and made himself bishop.

Cranach made other portraits of Johann throughout his life, although this is one of few surviving individual portraits of him from before he became elector. In other depictions from this time he is shown alongside his brother, Friedrich.

Style: High Renaissance
Lit by a shaft of sunlight against dark shadows behind, the group of figures playing cards form a colourful distraction in a rather grey environment. When we look closely at them, we realise this isn’t just an anonymous passage in the game but a moment of triumph, perhaps even the winning flourish. The man in the red coat has just produced an ace, while his opponent, in the blue jerkin, has the expression of a defeated man.

These players categorise the painting as one of a group of bambocciate (scenes of everyday life) set in Rome, many of which show tradesmen at work, or, as in this case, at play. The bambocciate are also characterised by dramatic contrasts in light and by a particular simplicity in the architectural and landscape forms in the background. It is these almost abstract shapes and forms which make this painting so distinctive and intriguing.

The monochromatic buildings behind the card players are almost devoid of detail, but they form an intriguing arrangement of shapes and angles. The diagonals and shadows of the roofs lead our eyes directly down to the contrasting circles and curves of the elaborate stone fountain. But there are strong vertical lines, too, which create a rhythm across the whole composition, from the shadowy wall on the left to the high spout which forms the spine of the fountain itself.

 The artist has also been careful to guide us through those spaces. We pick out the dog in the foreground, then the head of the half-hidden sleeping man. The white smudge of the donkey’s nose at the centre of the picture takes us around and behind the fountain to his red-coated master, and finally to the shadowy form of a man looking out into the sunset and the landscape beyond the city. It is these shapes and spaces, rather than the moment of triumph in the foreground, with which the artist creates the mood of the painting. It’s slightly mysterious, perhaps even melancholy.

This picture, like the other bambocciate paintings, is unsigned. They have been traditionally attributed to Pieter van Laer, but are now regarded as early works by Jan Lingelbach, painted during his stay in Rome in the 1640s. This was a time when he closely imitated van Laer. A third alternative is that another, unknown artist -- who has been named the Master of the Small Trades -- may be responsible.

Lingelbach was born in Frankfurt but his family later moved to Amsterdam. He is said to have gone to France in 1642, and then to Rome, where he learned to paint in a more Italianate style. He returned to Amsterdam in the 1650s and worked there for the rest of his life, primarily as a figure painter. He contributed figures to landscapes by other artists, probably including those by two whose pictures are owned by the National Gallery: Koninck and Wijnants. An example is the former’s  An Extensive Landscape with a Hawking Party, in which Lingelbach probably inserted the figures.

Style: Baroque
This view was one of several pictures that Corot painted in May 1871 while he was staying with his friend Alfred Robaut in Douai. He had gone there to escape the Paris Commune, a revolutionary government which had taken power in March that year following France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian war. Many of the pictures Corot painted during his stay in northern France are of specific sites, such as The Marsh at Arleux and Souvenir of Palluel, but this particular view has not been identified. It seems likely that Corot painted it in the studio, and it takes its title from the dominant tree standing at the left.

In the foreground three figures are huddled in a group. The characteristic red hat worn by the man on the left is a common feature of Corot’s figures, introducing a contrasting note of bright colour in the green of the landscape. The handling, particularly of the tree and foliage, is very typical of Corot’s late style. The preliminary sketching-in of the trees is visible through the paint, and many of the earlier branches, painted in fluid black paint, can be seen under the surface. Corot then used a brown, glaze-like paint to pick out the trunk of the main tree and further branches. The paint varies greatly in thickness: the undergrowth at the extreme left is depicted in very thin fluid brown paint, whereas a thicker paint has been used in the sky, such as the stroke of off-white which follows the line of the hills at the right. Corot used the handle-end of the brush to scratch the forms of grasses into the paint in the right foreground (a technique he also employed in The Four Times of Day: Noon). At a late stage he added a series of bright olive-green highlights, for example along the bottom edge, in a mixture of paint which included emerald green.

Style: Barbizon
This sitter's waistcoat and the cuffs of his coat are richly embroidered. His dignified bearing and expensive clothes identify him as a gentleman, but neither his identity nor that of the artist, is known. The work probably dates from the middle of the eighteenth century and is possibly by an artist who may have spent time working in Venice.

The artist's skill can be seen in the way he has portrayed the warmth of the sitter's gaze and his distinctive facial features, capturing his large nose and dimpled, slightly recessed chin. This man sits or stands against a plain, shadowy background but his face and clothing are brightly lit, revealing a variety of textures. His white neckerchief and powdered wig are described in thick, textured paint, while the embroidery on his waistcoat is evoked with dabs of pink, yellow and white paint.

Style: Rococo, Neoclassical
On the right of this river view a washerwoman, a common motif in Daubigny's river scenes, dips some blue cloth into the water. Close inspection reveals that she is kneeling in a box. These three-sided boxes, padded with straw, were commonly used by laundresses at the time to make prolonged periods of kneeling more comfortable and keep their own clothes dry.  In front of the laundress the water is punctuated by rows of waterlilies.  These were a well-known feature of the river Oise around Auvers, as described by the journalist Charles Yriarte: 'great carpets of waterlilies make the foreground to these ready-made pictures in front of which the painter has nothing to do but to sit down with his umbrella planted in the ground and his box of colours on his knees.’

Moored on the left is a flat-bottomed barge with a mast. Daubigny probably started this view down the centre of the river in the open air, and he may have been in his studio boat (for which see  River Scene with Ducks). However, he carried out further work back in his proper studio, extensively altering the right bank of the river, moving it, the tree and the washerwoman further to the right. An original tree is still visible through the lighter sky paint, and the first figure of the washerwoman can be seen to the left of the final one.

Style: Barbizon
Philip IV, King of Spain, and his entourage are hunting boar in a forest clearing. This was an expensive activity and such events were traditionally staged to mark special occasions or state visits. A large canvas fence or enclosure -- the tela real ('royal canvas') -- would be erected and wild boar driven into it, so that the King could demonstrate his agility in fending them off.

The enclosure fills the centre of the painting and, although our viewpoint is high, we are intended to identify with the spectators on the outside -- a boy dressed in white looks out at us. In the arena Philip IV appears on horseback, just right of centre, weapon pointed at a charging boar. He's accompanied by his first minister, the Count-Duke of Olivares (to his left), and possibly his two brothers, Carlos and Ferdinand, on either side. They are all armed with U-shaped forks called horquillas; a stack of them can be seen leaning against a tree. Over to the left of the arena a boar is being attacked by a pack of dogs. Outside it, three horsemen ride across the sweeping hillside; this is tricky terrain, and they'd need skill to find boar and manoeuvre them into the valley below.

Philip's wife, Queen Isabella of Bourbon, and her companions watch from the safety of their carriages, lined up at the edge of the arena. Isabella is probably the lady we can see in the rightmost carriage and the grey-haired man riding a white horse next to her could be Juan Mateos, Master of the Hunt.

In the foreground, a crowd enjoys the spectacle of the hunt, although many are not paying attention: a young man drinks deeply from a jug, three noblemen stand chatting and, on the right, a man is loading up a mule. Velázquez gives prominence to these secondary figures and not to the King, or the main action. He used the same approach in some of his early pictures in Seville, such as his Kitchen Scene with Christ in the House of with Martha and Mary.

The back of the picture is inscribed 'Pardo', perhaps suggesting that it was painted for El Pardo, Philip IV's palace near Madrid, or it might refer to the location of the hunt. In the early eighteenth century the painting hung alongside three other works of equal size by Pieter Snayers, also depicting court hunts (now lost), in the Torre de la Parada, Philip IV's hunting lodge at El Pardo, for which the paintings were most likely commissioned.

Probably painted in the mid-1630s, it's the largest of Velázquez's few landscapes, measuring nearly two metres high and three metres wide. Our collection has several pictures painted by Velázquez for the King, including his bust-length portrait of Philip IV of Spain and full-length image of Philip IV of Spain in Brown and Silver.

Style: Baroque
The dead Christ, wearing the humiliating crown of thorns and displaying his wounds from the Crucifixion, is supported by two angels. His head is tipped backwards, his jaw slack and his mouth lolling open in death revealing his teeth -- rarely seen in Italian paintings at this date and uncomfortably intimate. One of the angels gazes at Christ while the other looks at us for our response.

The figures fill the entire image, focusing our whole attention on the body of Christ, his wounds and his suffering. The atmosphere is one of intense emotion, emphasised by the restricted dark space, the elongated slender figures and the tightly cropped composition. An extra eye and eyebrow just visible to the left of the right-hand angel suggests that the angel has been moved from an earlier position.

Displayed above an altar, this image would have reinforced the direct connection of the bread and wine of Communion with the physical body of Christ, and with his suffering and sacrifice for the salvation of humankind. Above an altar, the image would also have given the impression of Christ being raised from his tomb. The upright position of his body (the pose reminiscent of Christ in Michelangelo’s Entombment) emphasises that he will be resurrected, just as the Christian faithful who partake of the sacrament will rise from the dead on Judgement Day. By stimulating the viewer’s emotions, the artist intensifies their personal connection with Christ.

The painting was once thought to be by the Sienese painter Sodoma. There is a similar picture of the same subject attributed to Sodoma in the Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena, but the National Gallery painting is clearly later in date. It has also been suggested that it might be a very early work by the Milanese painter Giulio Cesare Procaccini (1574--1625), or that the artist might be the little-known Fra Paolo Piazza da Castelfranco, who worked in the Veneto in the late sixteenth century.

There is a stylistically similar Pietà in the National Museum, Stockholm, by an unknown sixteenth-century Lombard artist, whose identity the art historian Federico Zeri has been attempting to piece together. Known as the Master of the Stockholm Pietà after what is considered to be his most important work, the group of paintings attributed to him have a highly individual and distinctive style, influenced by Sodoma but also revealing inspiration from the Milanese works of Leonardo da Vinci. Several of the works attributed to this artist are in prominent collections in Milan, suggesting that he may have been working there. It is possible that the National Gallery painting is also connected to this group of works.

Style: High Renaissance
At this wild party, men and women dance around a term (a carved bust of a bearded and horned man). This is traditionally identified as Pan, god of woods and fields, flocks and herds. The Greek word pan means 'all', conveying his power over the earthly world and the other gods. During the Renaissance, Pan came to personify lust.

In this painting, however, we cannot see Pan's usual attributes: a shepherd's crook and musical pipes (they are shown in Poussin's The Triumph of Pan). Their absence supports the idea that the statue could be Priapus, god of gardens and fertility, who wears floral garlands and exposes his genitalia.

These revellers are often seen in classical, pastoral scenes depicting the rites of Bacchus, the god of wine. The grapes and dancing suggest that this is a Bacchic festival, like those held during ancient Roman times to encourage a successful harvest. In art and literature, partygoers enjoy excessive drinking and fulfil their sexual desires, suggested here by the empty vessels and exposed skin.

The female dancer on the left with outflung hair squeezes juice from a bunch of grapes into a small dish held by a chubby child. Poussin has cleverly mirrored the linked arms of the dancers in the overlapping tree trunks behind them. On the right, a woman has fallen to the ground and stretches out her hand for help as she is drawn into the embrace of a satyr (a mythological figure known for lustful behaviour). The women could be nymphs or maenads, the wild female followers of Bacchus who were often identified by tambourines and loose draperies. The boldly coloured fabrics worn by the dancers contrast with the women's porcelain complexions and the ruddy skin of the men and satyr.

Poussin studied every aspect of the classical past, and he aimed to recreate that world for his educated, aristocratic patrons. The muscular bodies and crisp drapery folds recall ancient sculptures. Despite the frantic activity, the dancers have been carefully posed in a frieze-like composition, like the figures on ancient stone coffins, known as sarcophagi.

The painting was made in around 1632, and the figures have a more solid appearance than those in some of Poussin's earlier pictures of Bacchic subjects, such as Nymph with Satyrs, painted six years earlier. Poussin also used this group of dancers in reverse in a later picture, The Adoration of the Golden Calf. The landscape here was inspired by Poussin's knowledge of sixteenth-century Venetian paintings by Titian and Giovanni Bellini in Roman collections.

Style: Baroque, Academic
Under a stormy sky, cattle are herded across a frail-looking bridge, the fast water threatening to destroy the trestles that hold it up. The river swings round to the left and tumbles away in a mist of foam down the hill between jagged rocks. Norwegian pine trees pierce the clouds and the branches of a birch toss in the wind. Between them a view of purple hills stretches away in the distance.

The painting was once thought to be by Jacob van Ruisdael, the leading Dutch landscape artist of the seventeenth century, and the pendant of his A Waterfall in a Rocky Landscape. It has since been attributed to his cousin, Jacob Salomonsz. van Ruysdael, who imitated his style. Perhaps the slightly awkward placing of the mountain high above the trees on the right is a clue that the picture isn't likely to be by van Ruisdael, but the movement of the torrent and the atmospheric lighting still make a dramatic scene.

Style: Baroque
This is a study for a larger picture by Meindert Hobbema in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, and by comparing the two we can get an insight into how he worked. Instead of painting accurate, identifiable views based on a real scene, Hobbema -- and many other landscape specialists of the time -- adapted their compositions according to the effect they wanted to achieve.

In both versions, Hobbema used the shape of the treeline, the curve of the path and the pond in the middle of the painting as a structure. But for the finished work in Rotterdam he dropped the willow pollards in the centre and the dead branch which is so prominent in the study. He made the scene more animated -- moving the three figures further forward and turning one into a shepherd driving a small group of sheep -- and widened the view, adding a road and two more figures on the left-hand side.

Style: Baroque
This large painting originally stood on an altar in San Pancrazio, an important medieval church dedicated to Saint Pancras in the centre of Florence. This church belonged to the Vallombrosans, an order of reformed Benedictines founded by the nobleman Giovanni Gualberto in the early eleventh century. Among the Florentine families who owned chapels in San Pancrazio, the Rucellai were the most distinguished. They not only held the patronage rights over the high altar, but also commissioned a funerary chapel in imitation of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem from the celebrated architect and humanist Leon Battista Alberti.

This altarpiece came from the chapel originally adjacent to the Rucellai Sepulchre, a space now completely altered as a result of renovation works in the eighteenth century and the suppression of the church under Napoleon in the early nineteenth century. Except for the Rucellai Sepulchre, none of the works made for San Pancrazio are still preserved in the church (which is now used as a museum for the twentieth-century sculptor Marino Marini). Many of the altarpieces were scattered. This one was returned to the Rucellai family and stored in their Florentine palace, another celebrated work of Leon Battista Alberti and a prime example of Italian Renaissance architecture. The altarpiece was sold to the National Gallery directly from the palace in 1857, becoming one of the first early Italian paintings to enter the Gallery's collection.

At the centre of the altarpiece, in the middle of a landscape, sits the Virgin Mary. She is breastfeeding the infant Christ, a composition known as ‘Virgo Lactans’. A coal tit perched in the branches of the large oak tree behind her also feeds its young. Saint Jerome is kneeling before the Virgin, looking on in devotion. He clutches the stone that, according to the Golden Legend, he used to beat his chest to help him resist sexual temptation. Saint Dominic, the founder of the religious order named after him, kneels opposite, absorbed in the book he is holding. He grasps a white lily in his left hand -- his traditional attribute and symbol of the Virgin’s purity.

The Virgin and two saints form a triangular shape that is set off against the landscape background. On the left, a lion can be seen warding off an intruding brown bear. The lion is the companion of Saint Jerome, who appears again in the cave beyond, praying towards a Crucifix. On the opposite side is a little church with garlands suspended from its porch; in the centre of the painting, Saint Joseph walks just behind a donkey, perhaps a reference to the holy family’s flight into Egypt.

The elaborate frame is a nineteenth-century reproduction of what may have been the original one.  The long horizontal panel at the base of the altarpiece shows the dead Christ lifted from his tomb -- possibly an allusion to the Rucellai Sepulchre -- flanked by Saints Francis and Mary Magdalene and the Rucellai coats of arms.

Style: Early Renaissance