wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
Some of Rembrandt’s most powerful paintings -- especially those made later in his life -- are of men and women immersed in thought, depicted with bold brushwork and dramatic, shadowy light effects. Slumped sideways across a chair, one hand gripping the wooden arm and the other resting lightly on his temple, this elderly man is in just such a mood. His eyes are cast down towards the floor, and the light which slants across his body from behind his left shoulder throws them into a deep shade. This is not a portrait of an individual but a study of a 'character type', a genre of painting that lends itself to experimentation far more than would a formal portrait. And this picture does seem to be highly experimental.

Rembrandt has captured the gleam on the man's fingernail and the dry skin of his wrist with simple dabs and flecks of white paint. Bright white and yellow pigments evoke the shimmer on the fur collar and on the patch of yellow silk or satin next to it. These highlights, together with the man's balding head, the fuzz of greying hair, the upper part of his face and the wooden upright of the chair immediately behind are the only parts of the painting which have been articulated with precision. Although they have been evoked economically in places, with relatively few brushstrokes, they remain convincing even when we look quite closely at the painting. The rest of the picture is much more roughly sketched in. The highlights on the left sleeve, for example, are depicted with only half a dozen very broad brushstrokes. We have to stand well back from the canvas for the illusion to work.

This highly suggestive, sometimes quite rough, style of painting was very innovative for the time, and it was an approach which became more typical of Rembrandt’s work as he grew older. However, some studies have argued that inconsistencies -- and some perceived clumsiness -- in the painting style do not amount to experimentation. And they point to some unusual use of pigments that raise questions over the painting's authorship, suggesting that, even though Rembrandt has apparently signed and dated (1652) the picture himself in the top left-hand corner, it may be at least partly by a contemporary pupil or follower. In seventeenth-century Holland, a signature did not necessarily guarantee authorship in the way we think of it today. Rembrandt employed several apprentices who were encouraged to copy his paintings and to create their own independent compositions inspired by motifs or themes borrowed from his original works. While still apprentices, pupils were not allowed to sign their works; some of their better efforts may have been signed by their master before leaving the studio.

It is hard to believe that a painter would have taken such a bold and innovative approach when attempting to imitate the style of his master, and it has recently been convincingly proposed that this work does indeed represent an important early and experimental step in Rembrandt’s development towards the rough manner of his later works.

Style: Baroque
This impressively bearded figure is a fourth-century saint, Jerome, one of the Fathers of the Christian Church. He has several books, symbolising his extensive writings, including the first official translation of the Bible into Latin. He also holds a stone -- he spent several years living as a hermit in the desert, and used to beat his chest with a stone to distract his mind from sinful thoughts.

A red hat held on by a string hangs down the saint's back. Its tassel is visible through his beard. Late in his life Jerome became secretary to the Pope, so he is often shown with the red robes and hat of a cardinal (as in Saint Jerome by Carlo Crivelli) although this office did not exist in his lifetime. Jerome was a popular saint in the medieval period, especially with religious orders. He was seen as a role model for living an ascetic life -- he renounced worldly riches and pleasure -- and for his scholarly study of the Bible.

This painting formed part of the upper tier of a large polyptych (multi-panelled altarpiece). It was painted between about 1456 and 1461 by Giorgio Schiavone for the funerary chapel of the wealthy Roberti family in the church of San Nicolò in Padua.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
Boudin is most famous for his scenes of well-to-do holidaymakers on the beaches of the fashionable Normandy resorts of Trouville and Deauville. He produced around 300 such pictures during his career. Three of them are in the National Gallery's collection: Beach Scene,Trouville, is a typical example.

The artist passionately defended his efforts to paint these middle-class people at leisure, arguing that  ‘they are often resting from hard toil, these men who emerge from their offices and their studies.’ But an extended stay in Brittany in 1867, when he observed the hard life of agricultural labourers, seems to have provoked a change of direction. He confided to a friend: ‘This beach at Trouville that until recently delighted me, now, on my return, seems merely a ghastly masquerade.’ From that time on, Boudin began to paint fewer beach scenes. He turned his attention to ports, harbours, fish markets and the daily life of the inhabitants of the northern French coast, including its washerwomen. In all, Boudin painted around 100 paintings that focus on laundresses. Most of them were made in Trouville, where at low tide the wives of fishermen would come to the water's edge to do their washing. The subject was a perfect one for him, as it offered an opportunity to combine people, landscape and water.

The working-class women here occupy a different world to the seasonal visitors on Trouville beach. Ranged across the canvas in Boudin's characteristic frieze-like arrangement, they are hard at work washing their linen in the river Touques, just inland from the resort. Although they are viewed from a closer vantage point than most of the figures in the beach scenes, like them they remain anonymous and lack individual facial features.  A few broad strokes of paint capture the women’s movements as they rinse, rub and scrub the garments before hanging them out to dry on the fence behind them.

This was not the first appearance of washerwomen in French art. They can often be seen by the riverside in landscapes by Daubigny and Corot, where they are usually shown as diminutive, incidental figures. Daumier and Degas both produced images of laundresses at work, and the central character in Emile Zola’s novel l’Assommoir, published in 1877, is a laundress.

Style: Impressionist
The Archangel Gabriel announces to the Virgin Mary that she will bear the Son of God (Luke 1: 26--38). A dove of the Holy Ghost hovers above her in a bright circle of light. The Virgin, with her eyes closed and arms outstretched, accepts her role as mother to Christ. In the Bible, the Virgin responds to the angel by saying: 'Behold the handmaiden of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.'

In other paintings of the Annunciation in the National Gallery, we see winged putti surrounded by clouds and the angel holding lilies as a symbol of purity. Poussin's work is unusual, showing the Virgin sat cross-legged on a cushion. Her cloak is traditionally painted blue, as a symbol of heaven, but here it is yellow which may signify hope and purity. Fra Filippo Lippi's  The Annunciation and the Master of Liesborn's Annunciation panel for the Liesborn altarpiece show her traditional appearance.

A trompe l'oeil wooden plaque fixed to the stone parapet or low wall contains Poussin's signature, the date 1657 and the name of Pope Alexander VII Chigi (1599--1667), who may have commissioned the painting. However, it is not mentioned in any guidebooks to Rome that describe the Pope's houses and collection. The Virgin and angel are carefully arranged on the parapet as if the painting were intended to be part of a building. Poussin's patron and mentor Cassiano dal Pozzo died in 1657, and was buried in Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome. This work could have been painted as a memorial for his tomb.

The 1650s represent Poussin's late career, when he had developed a personal style inspired by his study of classical antiquity and Renaissance art. The figures are idealised and their rigid poses and stiff drapery recall ancient statues. The raised stone floor and column at the right give us an idea of the depth and size of their surroundings. Despite the room's rather plain appearance, the clothing shimmers in the light shining from the left and the angel's wings are decorated with three vibrant colours.

Style: Baroque, Academic
Although this picture has been given the title of Portrait of an Elderly Woman, the unknown artist has given the sitter few signs of age. She is unwrinkled, her small mouth is full and her eyes are clear. Her hair is dark, dressed in a plain but natural style, hanging either side of her face.

Like her hair, her dress is unpretentious. In the bourgeois fashion of the later part of the seventeenth century in the Southern Netherlands, her sleeves are slashed to show the white satin of her undergarment. The pearls around her neck glint in the light, and behind her a deep, red silk curtain makes a warm, flattering background.

Style: Baroque
A bearded saint stands in a stone niche. He holds a book and a pen, so he is one of the Four Evangelists, the authors of the Gospels, possibly Saint Mark: his dark curly hair and the colours of his drapery are similar to those of Saint Mark in Vivarini's Saints Francis and Mark.

The book -- finely bound in stamped blue leather with metal corners and bosses, and held shut with a clasp -- represents his Gospel. His quill pen is the type used for writing with ink before the invention of pens with metal points. They were usually made from the flight feathers of geese; contrary to the popular image they would have been stripped of the barbs, leaving just the hollow shaft of the feather, as here.

Although a saint, this figure has no halo or attribute; he looks more like a Roman philosopher. The quiet stone, the saint's abstracted and unfocused gaze, and the calm morning light make him seem far removed from the cares of this world.

This is one of two panels featuring evangelists from a triptych or polyptych, painted probably in around 1500 by Cima da Conegliano. Another panel from the altarpiece, Saint Sebastian  is also in our collection.

Through skilful modelling and use of shadow, Cima has made the figure look more like a sculpture than a flat, painted image. The richly contrasting colours of the saint's draperies and the brilliant light which falls on him from the right, casting shadows on the stone behind, are characteristic of Cima's style (you can see both in The Incredulity of Saint Thomas). The head of this saint was clearly based on the model Cima used previously for Saint Thomas in that picture.

Style: High Renaissance
After a female friend boasted of the jewels she owned, Cornelia Africana, a widowed Roman matron and mother of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus (known as the Gracchi), declared her sons to be her jewels (Valerius Maximus, De Factis). Cornelia educated the boys after their father’s death and they went on to serve as tribunes (powerful elected officials) in Rome in the late second century BC. Here Cornelia points to the books held by her young sons in contrast to the pearl necklace lifted from the jewellery box by her friend.

The quality of the top portion of this painting suggests that it is  an old seventeenth-century copy, perhaps made because the original was damaged or destroyed. The lower portion of the painting might conceivably be by Padovanino.

Style: Baroque, Academic
The Virgin Mary, crowned with 12 stars and standing on a crescent moon, looks towards God the Father and the dove of the Holy Ghost, which radiates divine light. Her sumptuous blue cloak is trimmed with gold lace and encrusted with jewels. She is surrounded by flying angels, who bear objects associated with her: an olive branch and palm frond to the left of her feet and a rose and iris to the right, with a mirror, lilies and the crown denoting her position as Queen of Heaven above.

The painting refers to the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception (the belief that the Virgin was conceived without sin). Much of the imagery associated with this belief was derived from the Old Testament Song of Solomon, once attributed to Solomon, the King of Israel, whose throne is probably to be identified with that at the top of the staircase to the left.

Two life-size figures -- the donors -- appear in the lower corners. An old woman, wearing black mourning dress and a transparent veil, brings her hands together in prayer. A younger man, presumably her son, holds a prayer book to his chest in a sign of devotion. His black hat (known as a biretta) sits on the table beside him, pointing to his ecclesiastical profession. He stands beside a red cloth-covered table, carefully positioned between him and the scene being played out beyond. It is as if he straddles two worlds, the heavenly and earthly realms, and his role as intermediary is further underlined by his outward gaze and pointing hand gesture towards the Virgin.

Valdés Leal has used variations in light and tone to distinguish between the earthly and heavenly realms. We are led from the dark, solid forms of the donors to the brighter image of the Virgin, and then to the ethereal figure of God. Except for hints of colour -- in God's red drapery, for example -- the heavenly realm is painted almost entirely in monochrome and using broad brushstrokes, creating a soft focus and ethereal atmosphere.

We don't know the identity of the donors, but they clearly wished to show their devotion to the Immaculate Conception. On the table lies a piece of paper inscribed with Valdés Leal’s initials and the date 1661 (though the last digit may not be original). This was a significant year: in 1661 a papal bull was issued proclaiming the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, though it was not officially adopted by the Catholic Church until 1854.

The subject of the Immaculate Conception was popular among artists during the seventeenth century in Spain, particularly in Seville where Valdés Leal settled during the 1660s and spent most of his career. Velázquez had treated the theme much earlier, in his The Immaculate Conception painted for the Carmelite convent in Seville, and Valdés Leal's contemporary, Murillo, was known for his numerous representations of the subject. The National Gallery's own The Immaculate Conception of the Virgin by Murillo, in collaboration with his studio, was produced around the same time as the work we see here.

Style: Baroque
This is one of three mythological scenes telling the story of Callisto as told in Ovid's Metamorphoses. Ovid's poetry was a popular source among artists of stories from Greek and Roman antiquity.

Golden-haired Arcas, the son of Jupiter, draws back his bow. His billowing crimson-vermilion cloth reveals his athletic naked body from behind. The head of a bear emerges from the woody undergrowth on the left but it is difficult to see the animal today, as over time the copper green glazes of the surrounding foliage have darkened to brown. Gold leaf glimmers through the sunlit trees and a breeze sweeps back Arcas's hair, which, like his bow, arrow and quiver, is highlighted with gold.The delicate beauty of this scene belies the tragic events about to unfold.

This little painting, about 18 cm square, was made to decorate the end of a wooden chest, known in Italian as a cassone. It is painted on canvas and would probably have been glued to a thin wooden panel. Cassoni were important pieces of furniture used for storing clothes and household linen. A bride's parents would give her a cassone as a wedding gift and she would take it with her to her marital home. These chests were frequently painted with the coats of arms of the two families joined by the marriage, or decorated with religious scenes or cautionary legends about love. They were often placed at the foot of the couple's bed.

Jupiter seducing Callisto was the first episode of the story and decorated the other end of the chest. The nymph Callisto was a favourite of the goddess Diana. While Callisto was resting in a leafy glade, Jupiter appeared disguised as Diana. He seduced Callisto and made her pregnant.

In the long painting for the front of the cassone (Musée Picardie, Amiens) Callisto's fellow nymphs reveal her pregnancy to a furious Diana, goddess of chastity. When Diana discovered that Callisto was pregnant, she turned her into a bear. In the third episode of the story, seen here, Arcas goes out hunting and, not realising that the bear is his mother, he shoots her dead.

The streaks of gold painted on Arcas's hair, bow, arrow and quiver, and his fluttering drapery, turn this horrific event into a charming, decorative scene. Perhaps the choice of subject was to remind the new bride who owned this cassone always to be faithful to her husband. The quality of Schiavone's paintings must have been greatly admired -- these pictures had already been detached from their cassone by 1779 and were displayed in a Venetian art collection.

Style: High Renaissance
A group of fashionably dressed aristocrats canter and prance round a stag at bay, threatened by hounds in for the kill. A huntsman holds a dog back by its collar and other riders gallop up or splash through the shallow river to join in the excitement, hat feathers flying and horns whooping. The horses in particular are beautifully painted in Wouwerman's flowing style, skilfully suggesting the speed and noise of the hunt in full chase. One of Wouwerman's characteristic white horses leads the chase, ridden by a red-coated man; another carries a woman hunter in an elegant gown, riding side-saddle and holding her hat.

The hermit outside his rickety cottage high on the hill on the right was perhaps intended as a moral contrast to the leisurely pursuits of the aristocratic hunters. Far from hunting on horseback being a way of feeding a household, it was a privilege reserved for the aristocracy, with severe penalties for anyone encroaching on their rights.

You can see another example of aristocratic hunting on horseback in A Stag Hunt in a Forest by Jan Hackaert and Nicolaes Berchem.

Style: Baroque
A monkey pauses while picking peaches from a pile of fruit to snarl viciously at another monkey gazing longingly at the hoard. The setting is ambiguous: the rich display of corn, grapes, apples, pears, quinces and peaches is positioned on a stone ledge and overflows onto a smooth floor, where two suggestively shaped gourds are prominently positioned. Monkeys were sometimes kept as exotic pets, so this scene might depict the discovery of fruit in store ahead of a stately banquet.

The composition is derived from the work of the Flemish hunt, animal and still-life painter Frans Snijders, to whom this picture was once attributed, but the lesser quality of its execution points to the work of Snijders' pupil Jan Roos. It was probably painted in Genoa where, having found high demand for his work, Roos settled permanently from 1616.

Style: Baroque
This panel once formed part of the uppermost tier of a  large altarpiece. His aged appearance makes this seated figure look like a traditional representation of God the Father, but he is actually Christ as he appears in the Book of Revelation -- the so-called 'Apocalyptic Christ'. Revelation, the biblical text that describes the end of the world, describes Christ as the 'Son of Man' wearing a long robe with a golden girdle, with his head and hair 'white as white wool, white as snow' (Revelation 1: 14), as here.

He holds a blue orb, seven golden stars within it, probably intended to show that 'in his right hand he held seven stars'. Revelation also describes how from his mouth came 'a sharp two-edged sword'. This is now missing, but technical analysis using infrared light shows two lines scored into the paint over his mouth and face. These could have formed the outline of a sword, probably made of silver, that was lost over time. In his left hand he holds a large pair of keys -- the 'keys of death and Hades [hell]' (Revelation 1: 18). Christ had given Saint Peter the key to heaven (Matthew 16: 19).

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
A lone tree, stark against the skyline, almost tumbles down the side of a dune. It seems to stand for the hard life led by farmers close to the sea in seventeenth-century Holland. But a patch of sunlight picks out two men on horseback, seemingly chatting, and a woman nursing a baby with a child beside her, suggesting that there is warmth and leisure even in this bleak landscape.

Close by, two men point out fishermen in a boat on the river. Further in the distance on a hillside, two men survey the mountains ahead. Wouwerman has included these for artistic effect: there are no mountains in Holland.

Jan Wouwerman was working in Haarlem and was probably influenced by his brother Philips, who in turn was influenced by Pieter van Laer. Van Laer had been to Rome, and painted scenes of Italian life in mountainous countryside. Jan Wouwerman evidently also took inspiration from the work of Jan Wijnants.

Philips Wouwerman and Jan Wijnants are both represented in the National Gallery's collection: see the former's A Stream in the Dunes, with Two Bathers and A Dune Landscape with a River and Many Figures, and the latter's A Track by a Dune, with Peasants and a Horseman and A Landscape with a High Dune and Peasants on a Road.

Style: Baroque