wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
Charlemagne, Holy Roman Emperor, kneels beside an altar at which a priest is performing Mass; the priest raises his hand to lift up the bread of the Eucharist. At the top an angel flies down from heaven with a divine proclamation bearing Latin wording: 'By the merit of Saint Giles, remission of sins is granted to Charles.'

This is one of the legends of Saint Giles, a popular French saint who was thought to have founded a famous monastery, Saint-Gilles-du-Gard near Arles. According to the Golden Legend, Charlemagne had committed a sin so awful he was unable to confess it (it was rumoured to be incest or necrophilia). When visiting the king, Saint Giles celebrated mass and prayed for him. An angel appeared, bearing a letter which explained that, because of Giles's prayer, the sin was forgiven.

This panel is one of four surviving fragments of a large polyptych (multi-panelled altarpiece) showing lives from various French saints, many with royal connections. Another panel, Saint Giles and the Deer, is also in our collection; the saint is recognisably the same man in both. The bystanders here are all highly individualised too and presumably based on studies from life, even if not intended as particular portraits. The church is based on a real one -- the royal mausoleum of Saint Denis in Paris -- and this is the only surviving view of it as it was in the late Middle Ages, albeit somewhat simplified. On the right is the tomb of Dagobert I, who died in 639 and was an early generous benefactor of the church; it still stands next to the high altar in Saint Denis. The gold retable on the altar was given by Charles the Bald, who died in 877, and was destroyed at the French Revolution, as was the great gold cross of Saint Eligius on top of it.

Saint Peter appears on the reverse side of this panel, painted in grisaille to look like a statue in a niche. This was a very popular way of showing saints in Netherlandish altarpieces -- you see it in Memling's Saint John the Baptist and Saint John the Evangelist. The artist of this panel had perhaps worked in the Netherlands at some point.

As in Saint Giles and the Deer many alterations are clearly visible, and technical analysis has shown that changes were made at every stage of both the underdrawing and the later painting process. For instance, among many changes, the cross of Saint Eligius was drawn and partially painted at a different angle, and the altarpiece was drawn with a semicircular top and showed the Crucifixion. The man on the right, with just his head and neck visible behind a kneeling torch-bearer, was added at a very late stage over the paint of the tomb behind him. The artist had an imperfect grasp of linear perspective: not only do the lines recede in different directions, but the Turkish carpet in front of the altar seems to tip at an alarming angle.

Style: High Renaissance
This is one of the few surviving intact scenes which once formed part of the central panel of the altarpiece made for the high altar of the Benedictine abbey at Liesborn. This painting is likely to have originally appeared to the right of the main scene showing the Crucifixion, below an image of the Adoration of the Kings.

Shortly after birth Jewish male children were required according to religious law to be presented at the temple to be consecrated.  Christ is shown in the arms of his mother, the Virgin Mary, who is about to hand him over to the priest.  He is probably Simeon, who recognised Christ as the spiritual Messiah (the longed-for saviour of the Jews) upon seeing him: 'then took he him up in his arms, and blessed God, and said, Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word: For mine eyes have seen thy salvation' (Luke 2: 28--30). Simeon was one of the saints to whom the altarpiece was dedicated. It was also dedicated to the Virgin Mary, which explains why this scene also includes a reference to the ritual of purification, where women who had just given birth had to offer two turtle doves (shown here in the cage held by Mary's attendant) as a sacrifice (Luke 2: 22--24).

In both this scene and one of the Annunciation, also in our collection, the artist has set the biblical event in a contemporary setting that would be familiar to worshippers. The temple, for example, is represented as a Gothic church with a high vaulted roof and decorative leaded windows. The sculptures on the slender pilasters are Old Testament figures. The central one is King David, legendary king of Israel who was famous for his harp-playing and who was the author of the Psalms. Christ was descended from him through Mary's husband, Joseph. Further on is the prophet Moses, holding the tablets of the Law, given to him by God on Mount Sinai and set out in the book of Leviticus, which details the laws to be followed after childbirth. The omission of Joseph is unusual, although this occurs in some other Westphalian pictures.

The picture was transferred from its original wooden panel to canvas, probably on account of damage to the panel.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
This panel was once framed with a scene showing the three Marys at Christ's tomb, and both belong to a series showing events from the life of Christ. This sequence of six paintings formed the middle tier of a large multi-panelled altarpiece made for the Florentine convent church of San Pier Maggiore. The central scene showed the coronation of the Virgin.

This scene shows Christ's ascension to heaven. It is similar to that of the Resurrection -- in both he makes a blessing gesture and is surrounded by rays, incised into the gold leaf of the background -- but now he is accompanied by angels playing musical instruments. Here, as there, the trees are golden where they catch the light that Christ emanates.

The scene is set in a rocky, wooded valley resembling the setting of Christ's tomb in the previous two panels, The Resurrection and The Three Marys at the Sepulchre. The tomb has been replaced by the Virgin Mary and Christ's disciples, who kneel in a circle and look up in awe, astonishment and prayer at Christ above. Arranging the disciples in this way gave space for all of them to be shown. There are now only 11 as Judas, who betrayed Jesus to the authorities, died by suicide shortly after his betrayal; he is replaced here by the Virgin Mary. The disciple to the Virgin's left is Saint Peter, and his prominence next to her is appropriate given that the church in which this altarpiece was placed was dedicated to him.

The artist may have drawn inspiration for the standing Christ ascending from frescoes in the so-called Spanish chapel of the Florentine church of Santa Maria Novella painted only a decade earlier by Taddeo Gaddi.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
Beside a broad river dotted with wildfowl, a walled town with tall towers forms the sturdy anchor around which this landscape full of lively details revolves. Labourers tend the land while landowners enjoy its pleasures. The river winds from the right edge of the picture into the distance, where the hazy outlines of distant mountains enclose the view.

The scene is framed on the left by a tree, which provides shade for shepherds and their flock. Behind this two men vigorously scythe a field of grass in order to make hay. Figures come in and out of the picture: to the right, hunters on horseback ride into the scene, some with falcons, trained to catch prey, resting on their gloved hands. A labourer couple appear to walk out of the picture, the woman with a large tray of fruit on her head. They may be on their way to the town to sell their produce at market.

The activities depicted belong to the summer months and represent the entire season. The tradition of painting series of images showing the seasons had a long history, beginning with illustrations of the ‘labours of the month’ that accompanied the monthly calendars in medieval illuminated manuscripts. Private devotional books called Books of Hours, made for wealthy courtly patrons, contained the most lavish and detailed illustrations. Such images were not confined to books, however, and many decorated walls in houses and palaces across Europe.

By the sixteenth century, cycles of paintings depicting the months and the seasons were popular, and Hans Wertinger painted both. Most of his versions are now in the German National Museum in Nuremberg. The National Gallery painting was probably made to adorn a domestic interior and, along with paintings of the remaining seasons, may have been set into panelling to form a frieze running around a room. We know of examples of two chimney pieces in the Low Countries that were, in the sixteenth century, decorated with friezes depicting the seasons. Winter, a picture now in Nuremberg, is one of several with almost identical dimensions and proportions to our panel, though it has a slightly different style of decorative gilded border at the top, imitating a wooden framing element -- a common feature of Wertinger's work. The artist appears to have made several cycles of the seasons and it is not yet clear to which of these Summer may belong.

The figures and features in the painting are drawn with confident energetic strokes, giving the scene a sense of vibrancy. This is particularly clear in the elegant and numerous curves of the trunk and branches of the tall tree. This emphasis on line can be found in the nature studies of Wertinger's fellow painters from the region around the Danube river, including Albrecht Altdorfer. The dominance of nature in their images paved the way for the development of landscape as a subject in its own right, rather than just as a background.

Style: High Renaissance
This, one of van Ruisdael’s most famous paintings, is a much bigger version of a similar landscape by him that is also in our collection: An Extensive Landscape with Ruins. Other smaller versions also survive. We don’t know which was painted first but this sizeable picture was almost certainly painted on commission and was designed to hang in a very large room. The others were made for more modest surroundings.

The size of this painting is matched by the sense of grandeur van Ruisdael has managed to create; the vast sky is obviously important to this. It takes up about two thirds of the painting -- a typical proportion in Dutch landscapes. But the way that the clouds seem to billow up towards us against a blue summery sky adds dynamism to the grandeur.

The landscape is underpinned with structural devices which help lead our eye into the painting. Closest to us, in the left foreground, stand two shepherds. They were painted by one of van Ruisdael's contemporaries, Adriaen van der Velde, though they may well have been part of the original design. Combined with two much tinier figures on the road down towards the church, they help us understand the scale of the landscape -- and tempt us to follow the winding path further, past the cottages until it disappears among the fields.

Van Ruisdael has used highlights, picked out by the sunshine which has momentarily broken through the clouds, to reinforce these devices and to add to the sense of depth. The sun illuminates not only the shepherds, but a sequence of features set at different distances from the viewer: first the castle and swans in the foreground, then the fields on the left and those which surround the windmill in the middle distance. A thin strand of blue shimmers on the horizon, suggesting the sun glinting on the distant sea. Finally, furthest from our eye, are the silvery tops of the highest of those billowing clouds.

As well as appreciating the sense of scale and depth he was able to conjure, van Ruisdael’s customers would have understood another dimension to this picture. The pastoral figures and the ruins in the foreground allude to a Italian tradition of depicting Arcadian scenes of country life among the ruins of ancient Rome. They had first been made popular a few decades earlier by Dutch artists returning from Italy. There was no expectation that these paintings represented real places; they represented an idea of a classical Italian landscape.

The same concept is true of this painting. Although it is reminiscent of the countryside around Haarlem, where van Ruisdael grew up and trained as an artist, no one has been able to identify the main church or an exact location for the panorama. Most likely it was an idealised view, evoking and reflecting ideas that he and his customers had about how Holland should look and what was important to them. The productive nature of the landscape was represented by the shepherds, the corn and the windmill; a sense of history by the ruined castle. The church -- the building that dominates the horizon -- stood, in their eyes, for eternal certainty.  

Style: Baroque
This is one of the earliest and largest known examples of a painting on tinned copper, and the only portrait. A smaller version on canvas is in the Galleria Nazionale in Rome, where from at least 1798 it has been identified as a portrait of Cardinal Savelli by Scipio Pulzone. The National Gallery’s version was probably the first of the two to be painted, as it is finished with more meticulous detail, and technical examination reveals evidence of changes to the composition made during painting.

Cardinal Giacomo Savelli (1522--1587) was made a cardinal at 16 and became Cardinale Vicario (Vicar General) of Rome in 1560. Two Savelli family inventories record several portraits of Giacomo Savelli at different stages of his life, painted on different supports (stone, copper and canvas) and at least one of the portraits is recorded as by Scipione Pulzone. Our portrait is thought to date from around 1576--87, due to stylistic similarities with Pulzone’s Portrait of Cardinal Granvelle (Courtauld Gallery, London) of 1576 (also on copper), and the date of Cardinal Savelli’s death in 1587. No other known examples of paintings by Pulzone on tinned copper survive. The tin coating may have been added to the copper to provide a smooth surface for painting and in the belief that it would prevent the copper from developing a green surface when the oil paint was in contact with it.

Pulzone, known as 'Il Gaetano', was famous for his meticulously naturalistic and rather austere ecclesiastical and aristocratic portraits. Cardinal Savelli is shown seated half length, looking at us, resting his arm on a chair against a plain dark background. Other than the rich fabrics of his ecclesiastical robes, the composition is devoid of other finery.

The texture of the paint is used to great effect in the face, with thick directional brushstrokes following the contours of the forehead, and the line of a vein marked out by small pinched dents in the wet paint. Pulzone is particularly known for his fastidious painting of hair and beards – here individual hairs are painted with fine strokes of fairly dry opaque paint in a range of pale greys and fawns over a base of thinly applied warm greys and browns. Pulzone's treatment of lace is equally meticulous, with the paint forming points of white that mimic the way that lace would catch the light. The Cardinal’s red robe, or mozzetta, has faded, affecting the tonal relationships of the painting.

Conservation of the portrait has revealed a series of distinctively shaped damages above the sitter’s right shoulder that were probably caused by deliberate scraping of the paint surface in the past to remove the artist’s signature. The shapes of the first two damages correspond to the outline of the words ‘Scipio’ and ‘Caetanus’, as Il Gaetano often signed himself. The shape of the third damage corresponds to the outline of Pulzone’s distinctive monogrammatic way of writing ‘faciebat’ (Latin for ‘made by’). The two damages at the right probably correspond to an inscribed date but it is not possible to tell what it was.

Style: High Renaissance, Academic
Beneath a sky of swirling cloud and warm sunlight, we take in a view of the Doge’s Palace, one of the best-known buildings in Venice. It overlooks a promenade called the Riva degli Schiavoni and the basin of San Marco. The Riva degli Schiavoni is named after the Slavic people from Dalmatia -- present-day Croatia -- who settled in this part of the city. Canaletto has given the scene a sense of tranquillity and calm.

While Canaletto sometimes captured important ceremonies taking place along the waterfront -- see The Basin of San Marco on Ascension Day, for example -- his subject here is the city in a quieter moment. A group of idle sailors surround the column of San Marco; one of them, hands on his hips and stood beside a barrel, is eager to explore his new surroundings. Nearby, we see merchants and foreign visitors, perhaps recently arrived from ports around the Mediterranean or beyond. Just in front of us and to the right, several boatmen pause for a moment to look out over the lagoon.

The churches and houses beyond the palace are laid out at a steeply receding angle, and the roof of the palace creates a line of glossary:perspective. Back on street level, this device leads our eye back towards the groups of Venetians on a leisurely walk, an old man with a walking stick and government officials in black robes, and then a knife-grinder beside a simple wooden hut. Precise brushstrokes describe the outfits and poses of the foreground figures. The palette is dominated by browns and blues, punctuated by the vivid red of hats and touches of yellow and white for the clothing.

We are positioned just above the quayside so that the watercraft -- sailing boats, barges, gondolas, galleys, and the fusta (single-masted boat) covered in a red and gold striped awning -- fill the right-hand side of the composition; the water is barely visible. From up close, the varied brushwork becomes apparent that Canaletto used to describe different textures and materials, particularly the splintered and broken timbers and pieces of stone littering the water’s edge. Thick layers of paint (impasto) combined with areas of thinner, almost transparent, paint create the white sail on the right, capturing the form of the cloth and the effects of light on it.

Here, Canaletto paints one of Venice's most iconic waterfront vistas. He repeatedly used ordinary Venetians and parts of the city that were popular among tourists as inspiration. They were also painted by Canaletto’s contemporaries, among them his nephew and talented pupil Bernardo Bellotto, and later in the century by Francesco Guardi.

Style: Baroque, Rococo
The resurrected Christ has appeared to the Virgin Mary in a room in a fifteenth-century Netherlandish house. The Virgin, sitting on a cushion by the window, holds a book with gilded edges and a green chemise binding -- possibly a Bible, the two columns of text being standard for medieval Bibles. Beside her is a bench with a carved lion on its arm; behind her is a bed of unusual shape.

Christ raises his hands to display his wounds, caused by the nails driven through them at the Crucifixion. We can see more wounds in his feet and his side. His open sarcophagus can been seen through the doorway in the rear wall, an angel sitting on the lid and two soldiers sleeping beside it. Through the window on the right we can see three women walking along the road. These are the holy women who discovered Christ's empty tomb the morning after the Resurrection (Mark 16: 1--5). The appearance of Christ to the Virgin is not mentioned in the Gospels, but it was widely believed that immediately after the Resurrection he revealed himself first to his mother.

In the nineteenth century this picture was hung with a Pentecost which was on panel and was the same size. It is almost certainly the painting now in the Heinz Kisters Collection at Kreuzlingen, Switzerland. In both pictures the figures are on approximately the same scale; the hands, feet and draperies are similar in style; the harsh light comes from the right; and the colour is much the same, though in this painting it is muted by damage. The two paintings appear to be from the same complex, perhaps a large polyptych of the Passion of Christ. They are about the same height as the painted wing panels of several carved altarpieces produced in Brussels in the late-fifteenth and early-sixteenth centuries. Both could have had painted reverses and may well have come from the  folding wings of a carved altarpiece.

The composition is based on the right panel of the Miraflores Altarpiece (Gemäldegalerie, Berlin) by Rogier van der Weyden but the poor drawing and exaggerated gestures of both this and the Pentecost distance them from the artist. The lively attitudes and bright colours of the Pentecost are reminiscent of the Master of the View of St Gudula. The two pictures are from one of the Brussels workshops of the end of the fifteenth century, where collaboration was commonplace.

The painting is in very poor condition and was seriously damaged when, and possibly before, it was transferred from a panel to a canvas support at an unknown date. Both Christ and the Virgin's heads are much repainted, Christ's halo is not original and his mantle is almost entirely overpainted, and the whole picture is covered with a very yellow varnish.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
This portrait was once believed to be of the noblewoman Lucrezia Borgia, but it does not look like other portraits of her. The enamel and gold coronet of leaves and berries the lady wears around her head suggests she may be of high rank, although we do not know who she is.

The pattern embroidered on her white satin sleeves may give a clue. It represents a staff crossed by two other staffs and a black feather, which could be a heraldic device of the woman's family or perhaps a personal emblem, known in Italian as an impresa. Bartolomeo Veneto incorporated heraldic or emblematic patterns in the clothes worn by sitters in his other portraits. The subject of his Portrait of a Young Man (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge) has a labyrinth embroidered in gold thread on his chest and branches embroidered on his hat.

The woman's dress now appears to be black with touches of yellow to represent gold. The fabric may be supposed to resemble a watered silk and could originally have been a dark blue or violet colour. The fine white linen shirt, or camicia, is of an unusual design, with six openings at the neck each fastened by petal-shaped enamel clasps tied with black laces with gold points.

The hexagonal beads of the woman's necklace, separated by knots on a black cord, are decorated on all faces with emblems or letters in black, red and white. The letters probably form parts of words from a prayer or a religious text. Among the emblems are the Cross, a ladder, pincers and three nails which are all associated with Christ's Passion. A very similar necklace made of gilt bronze is in the Kunstgewerbemuseum, Berlin. Around the woman's waist is a belt made of large, hollow gold beads, each consisting of a pair of cones joined at the base. Such belts were popular in north Italy in the first half of the sixteenth century and they often appear in paintings.

The portrait's poor condition makes it difficult to be certain that it was painted by Bartolomeo Veneto. Elements of the lady's costume and the long corkscrew locks of hair either side of the face are also found in early sixteenth-century paintings from Bologna and Lombardy. The distinctive neckline of the shirt, with its enamel clasps and laces, is also seen in frescoes by the Ferrarese painter Garofalo at the Palazzo Costabili in Ferrara. Bartolomeo Veneto may have painted the portrait in Ferrara during the early years of his career.

Style: High Renaissance