wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
The Virgin Mary is seated directly in front of us. Together with swathes of drapery, she covers almost the entire picture plane, forming a triangular shape that is set off against the dark background. Light radiating from the front brings out the vibrant colours of her garments. These colours are taken up by the flowers in the glass vase that stands on a table near the window. The naked Christ Child is seated on a tasselled pillow in her lap, his legs crossed. He reaches for his mother, but he gazes at us while breastfeeding.

Such intimate portrayals of the Virgin as a breastfeeding mother, known as 'Virgo Lactans', were very popular in the fifteenth century. They made the son of God appear human and approachable rather than divine and distant. Correspondingly, he and his mother are almost pressed against the foreground, as if to offer themselves for our engagement. It may be for this reason that Christ stares at the viewer, rather than focusing on his nourishment.

The Florentine painter Lorenzo di Credi specialised in the production of such devotional paintings. His sixteenth-century biographer Giorgio Vasari explained that this was partly because of his meticulous painting technique. According to Vasari, Lorenzo had no wish to make many large works because he took great pains in executing his pictures, putting an extraordinary amount of work into them. Vasari particularly praised the way in which he refined his oils and mixed his colours, creating an almost infinite amount of shades of colours on his palette. Such fine gradations can be appreciated here in the flesh tones of the infant Christ, and they help to create the illusion of three-dimensional form.

We don't know for whom Lorenzo made this particular painting, but the depiction of Tobias and the Archangel Raphael may give a clue. Based on the apocryphal Book of Tobit, the journey of Tobias was a popular subject in fifteenth-century Florence, especially appreciated by those whose jobs depended on travel, such as merchants. Here, they are approaching together from an alley seen through the doorway, accompanied by a small dog. Tobias holds the fish with which he will cure the blindness of his father, Tobit.

A celebrated Florentine representation of Tobias and the Archangel Raphael is also in the National Gallery's collection: Tobias and the Angel. It is attributed to the workshop of the painter and sculptor Andrea del Verrocchio, where Lorenzo trained together with the young Leonardo da Vinci. Recent research has shown that Verrocchio's painting was made for a member of an important religious confraternity dedicated to the Archangel Raphael. A member of such a confraternity might also have welcomed the ways in which Lorenzo's painting engages the viewer, and its colonnade and landscape background may have evoked the rural setting of the villa for which the painting could have been made.

Style: Early Renaissance
This painting, intended for private devotion at home, is an early copy of one of the most celebrated of Correggio's small religious paintings. It is a very striking composition with Christ and the angel placed daringly close to the left edge to allow for what originally must have been a beautifully rendered nocturnal landscape with dramatic contrasts of light and dark.

For a long time this painting was regarded as Correggio's genuine version, even after the arrival in London of the original from the Spanish Royal Collection (now in Apsley House, London). The Apsley House painting was damaged by fire and the right-hand side was repainted to show an earlier idea for the composition by Correggio. The National Gallery's copy records the landscape's original appearance.

The Gospels record that after the Last Supper, Christ went to walk in the Garden of Gethsemane to pray. He was accompanied by the apostles Peter, John and James, and asked them to stay awake and pray with him; they assured him they would. He stood a little way off from them and felt an overwhelming anguish, knowing that his betrayal and Passion were near. He appealed to God to spare him, asking to 'let this cup pass me by'. A little while later he acknowledged God's will and said, 'If this cup cannot pass by, but I must drink it, your will be done!' (Matthew 26: 42). He said this prayer three times and on each occasion when he looked at the apostles he found them asleep. He said, 'The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak'. An angel appeared from heaven to give Christ strength and comfort.

Correggio's composition shows Christ kneeling in the Garden of Gethsemane praying to God to be spared. The open rhetorical gesture of his hands shows that he is speaking. An angel swoops down to comfort him but Christ looks away and gazes upward to heaven. On the right, the apostles sleep on the ground, unaware of Christ's turmoil. The light that radiates from Christ himself and illuminates the angel is brighter than the dawn that is breaking beyond the distant mountains, recalling Christ's words: 'I am the light of the world' (John 8: 12).

Very unusually for one of Correggio's small devotional paintings, a preliminary drawing for The Agony in the Garden survives in the British Museum, London. It is on the other side of a study for Venus with Mercury and Cupid ('The School of Love'), which is also in the National Gallery's collection. The two pictures were probably painted at a similar time, between 1522 and 1524, although this copy dates from between 1640 and 1750.

The subject was painted by previous Italian artists, but Correggio's treatment of it as an emotionally charged nocturnal scene relates to Northern art, in which he was particularly interested. Cranach, Altdorfer and Holbein all painted the subject, and it is possible that Correggio had seen the subject in prints by Dürer. Dürer's images of the Agony have a tremendous and violent power that is unlike earlier images, which show Christ meekly accepting his fate. This emotional intensity appealed to Correggio.

Style: High Renaissance
This painting was once thought to be a self portrait, a mistake that probably arose from the misreading of an inscription on its original frame.  But the man’s gaze is so serious that he might be taken for an artist examining his reflection.

Antonello’s portraiture achieved a level of intensity that had not been seen before this time in Italy. Only 12 of his portraits survive and all have the same format: the sitters -- all men -- are depicted bust length (head and shoulders only, so they look like a sculpted portrait bust), placed against dark backgrounds and lit by a strong, cool light. All the images are tightly cropped and the sitters stare directly at the viewer. With all possible distraction removed, only the sitter’s face and expression are available for interpretation, inviting us to focus on their character rather than outward shows of status or wealth.

Antonello adopted this format from paintings made in Flanders -- a key example of the type is van Eyck’s self portrait, made in 1433. Antonello was a native of Sicily, and it has been suggested that his knowledge of the painting of the Low Countries and his skill in using oil paint were developed through training he received there, and that he introduced the medium to Venice when he travelled there in 1475.  This is highly unlikely: oil paint was being used in northern Italy earlier in the fifteenth century.

Antonello seems to have refined his technique while in Venice, as he adopted the oil paint medium wholeheartedly along with his Venetian contemporaries. His pictures are distinctive for the way they imitate the precision and refinement of works by Netherlandish artists that were hugely popular in Venice. Oil paint enabled him to portray a range of textures -- its sheen conveys the glossiness of the man's large eyes, for example -- and he also scraped through the paint to achieve the effect of having painted individual hairs on the man's head.

Lighter paint has been used to suggest light catching the tip of the man's nose and his sharp cheekbones; the underside of his chin and the left side of his jaw are cast in shadow. In between these extremes of light and shade are numerous mid-tones that make these transitions subtle and naturalistic. There are no harsh lines between the palest part of his skin, under his right eye, and the area just above it, beneath his eyebrow. By varying the tones in this subtle way, Antonello achieves a three-dimensional effect where the head appears to emerge from the darkness of the background. This technique was adopted by many other Venetian portraitists such as Alvise Vivarini.

Style: Early Renaissance
Forain worked as an etcher and lithographer, as well as a painter, acquiring a reputation for his satirical, and often biting, scenes of Parisian life. A friend of Manet and Degas, he participated in some of the Impressionists’ exhibitions from 1879 to 1886. His later paintings were mainly scenes from the law courts and of the ballet.

In his law court paintings, Forain’s sympathies lie with ordinary people, who are trapped within a complex and impersonal legal system. Although these scenes are in the tradition of Daumier, Forain avoids obvious caricature (for example, of lawyers and judges) and focuses instead on specific, and often mundane, situations and exchanges. Here, a poor man, accompanied by a little girl and carrying a young child in his arms, hands a paper to his counsel. Forain effectively uses gesture, pose and expression to convey the man’s situation.

The painting was owned by Henri Rouart, whose daughter Hélène was the sitter for Degas's Hélène Rouart in her Father's Study.

Style: Post-Impressionist
The New Testament recounts how, after his crucifixion, Christ rose from the dead and appeared to his apostles. One of them, Thomas, was absent and refused to believe Christ's resurrection without witnessing it himself. This painting shows their encounter, when Christ instructed Thomas to touch the wounds he had suffered on the Cross.

The action takes place in semi-darkness before a wall, its plaster crumbling at the top to reveal the brickwork beneath. Fingers outstretched, Thomas tentatively reaches towards Christ, clutching his other hand to his chest; we can sense his nervousness. Two men lean in behind him, craning their necks to see, while Saint Peter looks on over Christ's shoulder. Guercino has built a powerful sense of anticipation and tension through the picture's tight crop and dramatic lighting. The figures, transfixed by Christ, watch and wait to see what will happen.

Cropped at three-quarter length, the figures crowd the space, bringing us closer to the action and focusing our attention on the interaction between the protagonists. Guercino has chosen to illustrate the most dramatic moment in the story, and the one which evokes the most powerful emotional response: Thomas coming into physical contact with Christ. Time is suspended at the crucial moment just before Thomas’s realisation; it is as if we -- and the onlookers -- are holding our breath.

Christ, his right arm drawn back to reveal his wound, looks benevolently at Thomas. In his left hand he holds a wooden standard with a white flag, a symbol of his resurrection. The strong vertical of the pole divides the image in half. On one side we are presented with the steadfast, knowing Christ; on the other, in a hunched pose and with his face cast in shadow, we see doubting Thomas. The illuminated Christ acts as a beacon within the dark composition and the use of light is symbolic: Thomas, who hasn’t yet ‘seen the light’, is about to experience a revelation.

This picture's sense of drama, lighting and naturalism owe much to Caravaggio, whose influence was widely felt in the early seventeenth century. Painted in 1621, this work was made by Guercino just prior to his move to Rome in May of that year. It is one of a pair of pictures painted by Guercino for Bartolomeo Fabri, its pendant being The Betrayal of Christ in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Originating from Cento, the town near Bologna where Guercino was born, Fabri was an important early patron for the artist. He commissioned other works from him, including The Presentation of Jesus in the Temple, also in the National Gallery's collection, which dates from just two years later.

Style: Baroque, Academic
This painting is part of Romanino's high altarpiece for S. Alessandro in Brescia. It depicts Saint Filippo Benizzi and is situated to the right of the Nativity, above the panel of Saint Jerome.

Saint Filippo Benizzi (1233--1285) was born in Florence. He became fifth general of the Order of the Servants of Mary (the Servite Order) and its chief propagator and organiser. The Servites were a mendicant order who embraced poverty and were devoted to preaching the Gospel and encouraging devotion to the Virgin Mary. The Order was suppressed in 1276 by Pope Innocent V, while Filippo Benizzi was its general superior. He travelled to Rome but Pope Innocent V died before he arrived. Pope Martin IV asked Filippo to go to Forli and attempt to reconcile the divided city, which he succeeded in doing. He is also reputed to have healed a leper by giving him his tunic to wear. Saint Filippo Benizzi's body is in the church of the Servants of Mary in Todi, Umbria. He was beatified by Pope Leo X in 1516 and made a saint by Pope Clement X in 1671.

The church for which this altarpiece was made belonged to the Servite Order. Saint Filippo Benizzi wears the black scapular, tunic and cowl of the Order and holds a lily, which is echoed in the crosier held by Saint Gaudioso, who appears opposite him.

Style: High Renaissance
This unidentified scene is an early example of Corot's mature work, when his colour became more restrained. A pond, its edges curving towards the bottom left and right corners, takes up the foreground. It probably lies in the grounds of the tall building glimpsed at the extreme right, perhaps a mill or château. A path leads from an open gate across the middle ground, along which a woman herds her cow, trailing her stick behind her. Beyond the gate lies an unseen road or lane bordered by a hedge, with trees beyond, and further in the distance stands a higher bank of trees. The scene is bathed in soft light, the tonality of the vegetation muted and silvery.

At this period Corot employed a wide variety of brushwork, seen here in the small touches of paint in the tree at the left and the long, fluid strokes of paint in the foreground. Also typical for the artist is the handling of the sky, which he generally painted at a late stage of a composition, bringing it down, as here, over the tops of the trees on the horizon. The woman and her cow are insubstantially painted, with the pale brown of the path passing over the front legs of the animal. Corot has used the handle end of his brush to scratch out the bars in the gate, a technique which he used regularly, and which can be also seen in the foreground of The Marsh at Arleux.

Style: Barbizon
This painting by Pieter Neeffs and Bonaventura Peeters, which depicts a chapel during Mass, is a more elaborate version of another work painted in Neeff's studio: View of a Chapel at Evening. The studio picture shows only the chapel on the left side, in the moment just before Mass, while this one allows a view of the church beyond.

These are not the only differences between the two pictures: the altarpieces that appear in the chapel are different. In the studio picture, an image of the holy family graces the altar; in this larger version, a piece of fabric with a red cross appears to cover the altarpiece, revealing just the lower right corner of the painted surface. Besides its practical function, the fabric might be a reference to the veil of Veronica (the cloth that was impressed with an image of Christ’s face on the way to Calvary). On top of the altarpiece’s decorated frame are three sculptures. The middle figure could be Mary Magdalene, while the other two are angels.

A priest stands in front of the altar, his back towards the viewer; the gold chasuble he wears is richly decorated. He faces a carved crucifix that is flanked by two tall candles. Altar boys kneel at either side, holding long tapers -- they are probably the ones responsible for lighting the candles on the altar. A short distance from the priest and altar boys, people stand and kneel in worship. Some seem to be reading from prayer books or Bibles.

Besides a few scattered candles, the chapel is the main light source in the evening church interior. It provides just enough light for the view down the church’s nave, leading the eye all the way beyond the choir screen, where another service is taking place by the high altar. In the dimly lit right side of the picture, a man is visible sitting on a step, observing the service from a distance. His arm is in a sling, his head in bandages; what is likely a crutch balances on the steps. He might be a beggar who has found refuge in the church. The shadow he casts points the viewer in the direction of Pieter Neeffs’ signature and the much fainter date (1649).

Peeters was responsible for painting the figures, but only Neeffs  -- who did the architecture -- signed the picture. Many such nocturnal church interiors were painted by Neeffs and his Antwerp studio, following examples by both Hendrick van Steenwyck the Elder and the Younger, architectural painters from the northern Netherlands.

Style: Baroque
Saint Mary Magdalene is identifiable here by her halo and her emblem -- the pot of ointment with which she anointed Christ's feet. The decoration of the pot is intriguing: it seems to show scenes from  classical mythology. On the lid, one woman carries another through water -- perhaps the goddess Diana helping her mother across the strait to Delos, where she gave birth to Diana's twin Apollo. On the main part of the pot is Mercury in his winged hat. The two cows below him are perhaps Admetus' cattle, which were herded by Apollo and stolen by Mercury. Why these myths are associated with Mary Magdalene is totally obscure.

Though abrasion makes it difficult to distinguish the true style of the head, the heart-shaped face, wide-open eyes and bowed upper lip are close to some of Jean Gossart's types, and the lock of hair brought forward in front of the ear is found in a number of his female figures. This painting was perhaps made by a follower during Gossart's lifetime or shortly after his death: arch-topped panels and integral frames do not seem to have been fashionable after the middle of the sixteenth century.

Style: High Renaissance
The Virgin and Christ Child stand between two saints, one from the first century, one from the thirteenth. They don't have haloes, but we can tell who they are from their appearance and traditional attributes.

On the left is the first-century Saint Paul, holding a book; the sword with which he was martyred rests over his shoulder. Paul, known as the Apostle to the Gentiles (non-Jews), was a Jewish Roman citizen. He initially persecuted Christians but experienced a dramatic conversion while travelling to Damascus (as depicted in The Conversion of Saint Paul). He became a missionary, founding various churches in Asia Minor and Europe, and was traditionally thought to have written 13 of the books of the New Testament. He was eventually beheaded in Rome during the persecution of Christians by the Roman Emperor Nero.

On the right is Saint Francis, one of the most venerated figures in Christian history. Francis was born into a wealthy family in Assisi and lived an extravagant life in his youth. He renounced his inheritance after a vision in which the crucified Christ spoke to the saint and asked him to repair his house, which was in ruins. Francis founded the Franciscan Order -- friars who took religious vows but were not confined to a monastery (they lived in towns and cities).

The kind of small-scale, non-narrative composition, with the Virgin and Child between saints, is known as a sacra conversazione. Renaissance artists relied on devotional paintings like this for their livelihood -- they were their bread and butter. This way of showing brightly lit three-quarter-length figures in close up against a black background was devised by Andrea Mantegna, and followed by other north Italian artists, such as Giovanni Bellini.

Although this painting was once attributed to Cima da Conegliano, it is now thought to have probably been done by an assistant, maybe using workshop drawings. No other version of this composition survives, but all the figures can be found in other works by Cima. There is an extremely similar depiction of Saint Paul in an altarpiece that was once on the high altar of the parish church of Zermen, in northern Italy (now in the Museo Civico, Feltre).

Style: High Renaissance
Christ nailed to the Cross was once the central part of a triptych; it was originally flanked by two panels now owned by the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp. On the left was Pilate and the Chief Priests, which shows the Roman governor Pontius Pilate on a white horse surrounded by a group of men, some armed, some in exotic clothes. The Virgin, Saint John the Evangelist and the Three Marys was on the right. It shows a grieving Virgin Mary, supported by Saint John and accompanied by Mary Magdalene and two other women.

The central panel measures 49.5 by 95.2 cm, while the Antwerp panels are both around 45 by 42 cm; if the wings were set in frames 5 cm wide they would cover the central section when closed. We don't know when the wings were separated from the central panel.

Together the three panels make sense as a Crucifixion scene, as they include all the characters you would normally find in one. The whole triptych presumably stood on an altar, although we don't know where; our painting was in northern Italy in the nineteenth century. Perhaps it was made for a private chapel where it would have formed the backdrop for the Mass.

The altarpiece is one of David's earliest surviving works, painted in or after 1481. It is similar to, though not as well composed or drawn as, his Flaying of Sisamnes (Groeningemuseum, Bruges), which was finished in 1498 but perhaps begun in 1491 or even earlier. The two pictures share a kind of practical cruelty, as the torturers carry out their jobs with brutal efficiency.

Style: Early Renaissance, Gothic
La Terrasse at Vasouy, The Garden and La Terrasse at Vasouy, The Lunch once formed a single decorative panel, commissioned by the dramatist Jean Schopfer in 1901 and installed in his Paris apartment on the Avenue Victor Hugo later that year. They show Jean and his wife at the time, Alice, relaxing with friends in a Normandy summer home.

When Jean and Alice divorced in 1903, he ended up taking Vuillard's painting, and in 1910 it was installed in the Paris apartment he shared with his new wife, Clarisse Langlois Schopfer. A few years after Jean's death in 1931, Clarisse asked Vuillard to divide the panel into two and rework some of the figures and the foliage, which he did throughout 1935.

Style: Nabi