wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
These panels were once the wings of a small triptych, the centre panel of which -- The Virgin and Child with Two Angels -- is now in the Uffizi, Florence. The architectural settings, the step, the patterns of the tiled floors and the landscapes are continuous from the wings to the centre panel. The open triptych shows the Virgin and Child enthroned on a dais, with two saints standing on the same dais. Though all three panels are framed by arches, the principal figures inhabit the same open edifice.

This composition, with the Virgin and Child enthroned and flanked by standing saints, was a popular product of Hans Memling's workshop. The Virgin, Christ and angels in the Uffizi painting reappear in several other pictures by him, including The Virgin and Child with Saints and Donors  (The Donne Triptych).

The altarpiece was demonstrably in Florence by the end of the fifteenth century, as its landscape backgrounds were frequently copied by Florentine artists of the time. The earliest datable copies are from an altarpiece by Fra Filippino Lippi datable to 1482--83, which includes copies of the castle on the left and the watermill on the right. Our panels were probably painted around 1480, by which time Memling was the leading artist in Bruges and very popular with Italian patrons.

On the outside of the wings nine beautifully painted cranes stand in a dark landscape beneath the coat of arms and emblems of the Pagagnotti, an important Florentine family and close associates of the famous bankers and de facto rulers of Florence, the Medici. The triptych's first owner was almost certainly the high-ranking bishop Benedetto Pagagnotti, who used the crane and compasses as his emblem. He was initially a friar at the Dominican priory of San Marco and became bishop of Vaison in 1485, though he remained in Florence and was give the title 'suffragan and lieutenant general of the Archbishop'. A figure of very considerable importance, he moved in 1486 from San Marco to the less austere Dominican convent of Santa Maria Novella, where he occupied the papal apartments. He died in 1523.

Benedetto Pagagnotti is not known to have visited the Netherlands, so the triptych was presumably commissioned by a well-informed associate, either on his behalf or as a gift for him. His relative, Paulo Ulivieri-Pagagnotti, probably did visit Bruges and may have been involved. It might also have been facilitated by the Bruges branch of the Medici bank. The saints in the wings, John the Baptist and Lawrence, have no obvious connection with the Pagagnotti, although Saint John is the patron saint of Florence. Several members of the Medici family were named Giovanni and Lorenzo, however, and in 1491 Benedetto addressed Lorenzo the Magnificent as his benefactor; perhaps they are a compliment to his patrons.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
Jason swearing Eternal Affection to Medea and The Capture of the Golden Fleece are two of a series of seven illustrations of the story of Jason made by  Jean-François de Troy as sketches for cartoons for the Gobelins tapestry works in Paris.

Between 1737 and 1740 de Troy painted a series of seven tapestry cartoons illustrating The Story of Esther. He exhibited them at the Salon of 1742 where they were seen by Philibert Orry, count of Vignory, who wrote to de Troy in Rome, commissioning another series of seven cartoons on a different subject for the king of France. The story of the biblical king Solomon and that of the classical hero Jason were suggested. De Troy wrote to Orry that, convinced he would choose the story of Jason, he had already made a sketch of the largest picture, Jason taming the Bulls, which he promised to send as soon as it could be rolled up for transport. In fact de Troy did not send any sketches until he had finished the whole set, writing that it would be easier for Orry to judge them when seen all together.

The first five of the sketches were: Jason swearing Eternal Affection to Medea; Jason taming the Bulls (Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham); The Combat of Soliders born from Serpent's teeth (Musée du Petit Palais, Paris); The Capture of the Golden Fleece and Medea making Jason's father Aeson Young Again (sold at Sotheby's, New York 25 January 2001). These were all episodes based on Ovid's Metamorphoses. For his sixth and seventh scenes de Troy chose episodes that do not occur in the Metamorphoses but are recounted in Euripides' tragedy Medea. They occur later in the story, after Jason has abandoned Medea in favour of his new bride Glauce. In the sketch for de Troy's sixth scene, Glauce's father Cresus is consumed by the poisoned cloak sent by Medea (Musée du Petit Palais, Paris) and in the seventh, Medea rises in her chariot after killing her two children fathered by Jason (location unknown).

The sketches were finished by 15 February 1743 and the cartoons were completed by the end of August 1746. They arrived in Paris in September 1748 and weaving began at the Gobelins works the following year.  No less than eight complete sets of tapestries were woven, including one which was hung in the king’s room and throne room in the palace of Versailles. Another of the tapestry sets is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

The series may have been intended to express the courage of King Louis XV of France. However, the German Romantic writer Goethe viewed the tapestries in a different light. He saw them in 1770, when they were on display in a pavilion overlooking the Rhine that had been erected to welcome Marie Antoinette, who was then on her way to France to marry the dauphin (the future king Louis XVI), who was beheaded during the French Revolution. For Goethe, the tragedy of Jason and Medea was a sinister presage of the future.

Style: Baroque, Rococo
An elderly man kneels in landscape, beating his sunken and bleeding chest with a stone. He gazes up at a Crucifix attached to a tree, on which hangs a painted figure of Christ. This is Saint Jerome, hermit and translator of the Bible. His cardinal's robes and hat lie discarded behind him.

The rocky and wooded landscape is presumably the wilderness to which he fled and where he beat his chest when tempted by sinful thoughts. According to legend, while there he pulled a thorn out of a lion's paw. It remained his faithful companion until his death -- here it lies beside him like a pet dog. The tower behind could be Bethlehem, where Jerome settled in the year 386.

The subject of the penitent Jerome was popular in the Low Countries. One of the so-called Doctors of the Church, Saint Jerome was seen as a role model for living an ascetic life -- he renounced worldly riches and pleasure -- and for the scholarly study of the Bible. Widely travelled and well educated, Jerome was deeply affected by a dream in which God accused him of loving classical literature more than scripture. He went to live in the desert of Chalcis in Syria, gave up the classics he knew and loved, and learnt Hebrew to study the Bible in its original language. He later went to Rome and became secretary to the pope, so is often shown with the red robes and hat of a cardinal, as in Crivelli's Saint Jerome, although the office did not exist in his lifetime. He started work on what was to become the standard Latin text of the Bible.

The condition of this painting makes it impossible to judge its quality accurately. It is clearly in the style of Gerard David, but due to the popularity of the subject a number of versions were made by David's followers. It may be compared with Canon Bernardijn Salviati and Three Saints -- the cross shown at an angle is similar to one in the panel of this diptych that is now in Berlin -- and is probably a version of a pattern by David painted in his workshop at about the same time as Salviati's picture, in around 1501.

Style: High Renaissance
In Morning (Le Matin), the first painting in the series of Lancret's Four Times of Day, an abbé (priest) is attending a young lady’s toilette as she takes her breakfast and gets dressed for the day. The clock says the time is 9.08 am. The young woman, wearing a skirt with a large flower design of a type fashionable in the 1730s, has turned away from her dressing table to pour hot water into the abbé's teacup. The porcelain pouring bowl is probably for milk. The cups and saucers of brown-glazed Chinese porcelain of the Kangxi period are also in the latest fashionable style. Tea drinking in France was an activity for the relatively wealthy, so we can assume that the young lady is well-off. The furniture and striped fabric or paper on the walls reinforce the impression of wealth. The young lady’s skirt appears to be made of silk and even her maid looks expensively dressed. The abbé’s powdered hair, frilled shirt cuffs and silver-buckled shoes suggest that he is also comfortably off.

Having been admitted just after 9 am, the abbé finds himself in the presence of lady in a state of undress – her right breast exposed and not covered by her chemise or the white cloth covering her shoulders that she wears over it. The association between the toilette and opportunities for flirtation was well recognised. The pair look directly at each other, the abbé risking having his hand scalded by the tea – perhaps a visual metaphor for the risk to his soul. His eyes shine like the glazed teapot, cups and saucers, their rounded forms echoing the woman’s breast. It has been suggested that there is a deliberate confusion between the lady baring her breast and baring her soul to the abbé in the form of her morning confession. However, the presence of the maid makes this interpretation unlikely. Lancret leaves unanswered the question of why there are two spare cups on the table – there are no chairs for other visitors. However, the sense that they might imminently arrive adds a frisson to the scene.

Lancret and Hogarth may have responded to each other's work on either side of the Channel. Hogarth’s prints of his own Four Times of Day, published in 1738, the year before Lancret’s Morning was exhibited at the Salon, are not connected in their subject matter or spirit to Lancret’s series. However, there are similarities between Lancret’s Morning and plate 2 of the engravings after Hogarth’s A Harlot’s Progress, published in 1732, which appears to have inspired Lancret. Hogarth possibly repaid Lancret’s compliment in The Toilette, one of his six pictures from Marriage A-la-Mode, in which the lawyer Silvertongue, wearing a wig and costume similar to those of Lancret’s cleric, pays court to the Countess.

Style: Baroque, Rococo
How do you paint music? It was a challenge which fascinated many Dutch artists in the early sixteenth century, when pictures of musicians and musical parties were very popular. Here ter Brugghen focuses on a lute player lost in his art, drawing us close to his subject by using strong, dramatic lighting to highlight the folds under his eyes, the long shadows of his fingers and his shiny red nose -- so red that Hendrick ter Brugghen may have been exaggerating for comic effect. Perhaps he was suggesting that the player had a few glasses of wine before launching into song. All this makes him seem more real, as though he is singing directly to us.

Such pictures of single musicians painted half-length were particularly popular among a group of painters based in Utrecht. They were know as the 'Dutch Caravaggists' because several, including ter Brugghen, had lived and studied in Rome and been heavily influenced by the distinctive style of Caravaggio and his followers. They imitated his dramatic lighting effects and his preference for painting his subjects close up -- and copied his subject matter too.

Genre paintings of solo instrumentalists were not new -- there are examples from the early sixteenth century -- but Caravaggio’s two (or possibly three: the authorship of one version is disputed) paintings of a lute player of around 1596/7 seems to have reignited interest in the subject. Caravaggio included flowers, a violin and, in one version, a recorder in his compositions, perhaps to suggest an intellectual link between music, love and the transience of life. His Dutch imitators preferred to strip out extraneous detail, focusing entirely on the relationship between musician and instrument. A clue as to how the painting may have been understood at the time has been found in an engraving, made in 1624, of another painting of a singing lute player by ter Brugghen. Underneath was printed: 'I play expertly on the sweet full strings of the lute / Thereby I can also sing lustily and know that it sounds good.'

Ter Bruggen and his fellow Utrecht painters -- such as van Honthorst, who had been in Rome at the same time -- made many such paintings. As well as lutenists, he depicted players of bagpipes, viols, violins and flutes. As here, the colourful, flamboyant costumes they wear are not typical of Dutch fashion of the time. They may reflect the dress used by stage performers, or may simply be intended to add a touch of exoticism to the pictures.

While ter Brugghen was clearly heavily influenced by Caravaggio he also developed his own distinctive style (which you can see here). His brushwork is much looser than Caravaggio’s, suggestive rather than precise -- look at the short, broad brushstrokes he has used to depict the ostrich feather in the hat, for example. Nevertheless, ter Bruggen’s observation is acute: he is careful to render the slightly concave surface of the soundboard (front panel) of the lute, and the musician’s shiny red nose and glistening lips are highlighted with precision.

Style: Caravaggist
This panel is one of three that come from the lower tier of an altarpiece made for the Duke of Milan. The other two -- The Virgin and Child with an Angel and The Archangel Raphael with Tobias -- are also in our collection.

The Archangel Michael stands triumphant after his cosmic battle with the devil (Revelation 12: 16). He was often shown as a youth wearing armour, with large elaborate wings. A pair of scales, hanging on the tree stump to the left, are a symbol of Michael's role in the judgement of souls after death, when good and evil deeds were weighed up. Perugino has signed the painting just below the tree stump: PETRVS PERVSINV(S) / PINXIT.

Depictions of Michael often show him dressed in armour trampling the devil (look at panels by Piero della Francesca and Bermejo, for example). You can still see part of the body of the devil here: his long, curved horn is hooked over Michael's foot, his black wing against his shield. The rest was lost when the panel was cut down in the eighteenth century, but a painted copy, made before this, records its original appearance. Perugino planned the armour in a detailed drawing, now in the Royal Library, Windsor: it is almost identical to the final painted version, down to the strap which ties the breastplate to the tunic. The drawing is highlighted with strokes of white paint to indicate the areas that reflect the light, showing just how concerned Perugino was with getting the texture of the armour right. Michael's pose may be inspired by Donatello’s sculpture of the youthful Saint George, made for the church of the Orsanmichele in Florence (Museo del Bargello, Florence). The sculpture, which Perugino would certainly have known, shows the saint as a boy and a hero who is like Michael, both gentle and strong.

Later in the eighteenth century, after it had already been reduced in size, the painting was cut in half and the upper half was cut at each edge, reducing the size of the wings; we don't know why. The two halves were reunited before the picture entered our collection, through the fragments of the wings were never recovered. By that time they had been replaced, so the outer edges of the wings that we see today are not original.

Style: Early Renaissance, High Renaissance
Le Sueur shows us a moment described in the Gospel of John, when Christ speaks to his mother, the Virgin Mary, and his disciple, Saint John the Evangelist, just before he dies (John 19: 25--30). Opposite Mary and Saint John kneels Mary Magdalene, her hands clasped together in prayer. Their faces, mouths slightly open and eyes widened as they stare up at Christ, express their disbelief and grief.

Darkening clouds add to the sombre mood. The pale tones of Christ's body contrast starkly with the vibrancy of the Virgin's traditional blue robe and Mary Magdalene's shimmering golden clothing, revealed by the strong light falling from the right. Despite the small size of the painting, Le Sueur creates a dramatic effect by placing the figures within a narrow space, with a rocky slope to one side. We are included in the scene, placed directly in front of the Cross and level with the figures.

Le Sueur was probably inspired by a painting on this subject by the studio of Simon Vouet, now in the Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg. Le Sueur had started working as one of Vouet’s principal assistants in 1631, and stayed with him for over ten years. Both paintings include an imaginary view of Jerusalem in the distance, but there are significant differences in the position and gestures of Saint John and Mary Magdalene. Le Sueur was developing his own style, and the way he experiments with facial expression and hand gestures to convey emotion in this composition distinguishes him from his master.

Another painting of this subject in the Louvre, formerly attributed to Le Sueur and now considered the work of Vouet's studio, has a similar composition. This one is larger in size, there is no inscription on the cartellino fixed to the Cross and the position of the Virgin's head has changed. Both were probably painted during the early 1640s. During this time, Le Sueur began studying the work of Nicolas Poussin and developed a new way of painting figures that was more sculptural, but retained his characteristic refined colours.

We don't know the original location and owner of the National Gallery's painting. It was probably intended to be positioned in a chapel or private room in the home to aid prayer. During the early nineteenth century, it was placed in the Bar Convent chapel in York.

Style: Baroque, Academic
Francesco Botticini’s S. Gerolamo Altarpiece is named after Saint Jerome (who appears at its centre) and S. Girolamo in Fiesole, the church dedicated to him where it originally stood. This is its predella -- a horizontal board which is positioned below the main panel of an altarpiece, and typically shows scenes from the lives of the saints depicted above it.

Saint Jerome (Gerolamo or Girolamo in Italian), a fourth-century theologian, is best known for his translation of the Bible from the original Hebrew and Greek into Latin. The four images here show famous episodes from his life: Jerome removing a thorn from a lion's paw; his vision of being beaten for enjoying pagan literature; his death; and his appearance with Saint John the Baptist to Saint Augustine. The coats of arms of the altarpiece’s patron appear at either end of the predella.

The first scene is probably the best known. Saint Jerome, identified by his halo, is attending to a lion. Another friar, frightened of the animal, sprints towards the monastery where others hide. Jerome had recognised that the lion approached because it was injured, and cured it by removing a thorn from its paw. Many painters depict the lion as the saint's companion, as Botticini has in the main panel of the altarpiece -- but the predella panel gave the artist the chance to further explore this miraculous encounter between man and animal. When the Florentine artists Fra Filippo Lippi and Pesellino were tasked with depicting a scene from the life of Saint Jerome for the predella of the Trinity Altarpiece, they selected the same episode: Saint Jerome and the Lion.

The second scene -- which is derived from the Golden Legend, a thirteenth-century collection of saints' lives -- is much rarer. It is probably based on the predella of an altarpiece by Zanobi Strozzi that also came from S. Girolamo (now in the Musée du Petit Palais, Avignon). The Golden Legend describes how Jerome was dissatisfied with the writings of the prophets of the Old Testament and occasionally preferred pagan authors -- much to the dismay of God. One night, while reading Plato and Cicero, Jerome was overcome by a severe fever. Near death, he was brought before God and beaten for his wrongdoing. He swore to renounce any non-Christian writings and awoke, bearing the injuries of his punishment.

The third predella epsiode repeats the basic composition of the second. A small group is gathered round the bier on which Jerome's body has been placed. A priest reads a final prayer while friars mourn the saint’s death. The final scene shows Saint Augustine, who while writing an epistle to Saint Jerome has been interrupted by a vision of Jerome in the company of Saint John the Baptist.

Style: Early Renaissance
'As the old sing, so pipe the young.' Jan Steen often used this motto, which means that children learn by example, as a theme for his paintings. And in the background of this raucous picture of the interior of an inn, a young lad, his back to us, dips his finger into something delicious -- probably something forbidden since he hides what he's doing.

The actions and expressions of the men also imply the tasting of forbidden fruits denied them by the young woman in the brown dress. Her hand protects her breasts and her bodice is tightly buttoned. She shoves away the invasive and uninvited hand of the laughing man beside her, who lifts her skirt while the figure in the red cap tamps tobacco into his pipe with a suggestive finger. Behind him another man sniffs appreciatively at an open wine jug while gazing at the woman.

Steen has sprinkled this comic moral tale with erotic symbols: the handle of the frying pan, a phallic symbol, pointing suggestively towards the men; open mussels, a well-known aphrodisiac; the open bung of the barrel and the stick waiting to enter it. The broken eggshells were said to speak of lost virtue, although in this case they might stand for the thwarted desires of the men rather than the moral status of the woman. Her collar is clean and sparkling white, her hair neat -- this is the respectable landlady of the inn, not one of Steen's smiling, happily rumpled and complicit young women joining in the rowdy joke. For joke it is, however it might appear today.

Steen found a market for bawdy, 'slice of life' pictures and painted them possibly in their dozens, but always with humour, wit and parody -- especially self-parody. As in many of his paintings, Steen shows himself -- the laughing man -- red-faced, drunk and delighted at his own idea of a joke, but displaying himself as an object of mockery. This isn't a self portrait in the true meaning of the word, however. His features and perhaps something of his personality are there, but he's assuming a character, as are all the other figures in the picture. Steen owned and ran a pub as well as being an artist and it's likely that he brought in friends to model for him. It's as if he's painting a scene from a comic play or a book. Whether he acted himself or not we don't know, but we do know that he liked the theatre and literature.

Painted towards the end of Steen's life, the background is less distinct and full of detail than his earlier work, but it still has the robust life, energy and humour the artist is famous for.

Style: Baroque