wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
A bearded saint is being raised up to heaven by Christ, who leans out of a cloud to grasp him by the wrists. This is Saint John the Evangelist, usually shown as a young man, but here old, balding and bearded. This is the centre panel of a large polyptych made for the high altar of the church of the Camaldolese nunnery of San Giovanni Evangelista in Pratovecchio, Tuscany.

At the top Christ is surrounded by bearded saints and figures from the Old Testament, including King David, identified by his crown and psaltery (a kind of medieval harp). Saint John wears a pink cope, decorated with embroidered figures of prophets and evangelists holding books or scrolls. He is being lifted out a tomb in front of an altar. The Golden Legend, a medieval collection of saints' lives, tells how Saint John had a pit dug in front of the altar of his church in Ephesus. After mass one night he said farewell to the congregation and climbed down into the pit, then held up his hands and prayed to Christ. Bright light shone around the altar; when it stopped the saint had vanished. Here we can see Saint John kneeling on a strangely solid looking cloud, with the empty pit and the altar below.The incised rays around him perhaps represent the great light mentioned in the story.

The Florentine artist Giovanni dal Ponte probably took the idea of showing the saint lifted bodily up into heaven from a glossary:fresco of this scene painted by Giotto in the Peruzzi Chapel in Santa Croce in Florence in about 1328. But rather than sliding up diagonally, as in Giotto's fresco, here Saint John is pulled directly upwards by Christ. Dal Ponte might have adapted the iconography either to follow the Golden Legend more closely or to make the scene fit better into the centre panel of an altarpiece.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
The vast majority of this picture is taken up by the landscape, but our perception of it hinges on the two figures standing in the gateway. The angle created by the dead tree and stumps in the left foreground guides our gaze to them, as does the red dress of the milkmaid, which stands out so strongly against the deep green background. A sense of movement, the slight lilt of her posture as she steps towards the man with his back to us, also catches the eye.

Two milk buckets hang from the milkmaid’s yoke; we can’t tell if they are full or empty, but the long shadows and the up-lit clouds suggest that it's evening and she is on her way to the cows in the field to her left. Her companion also wears a yoke, but the hangers are looped loosely upwards and he appears to be showing her something in one of his own buckets.

Behind them, a long silvery thread of light reflects off the path running down to the muddy foreshore and then the winding creek beyond. Finally it leads to a distant sailing boat and a tiny grey windmill on the skyline. This meandering line gives a sense of depth to the picture and connects us -- as well as the two figures -- with the far horizon. It also subtly divides the landscape into two halves. The town and church stand on the right side, with what seems to be a large, moated country house to the left. This is probably not a depiction of a real place, but an arrangement which Aert van der Neer created in the studio for pleasing effect.

The figures talking on the bridge are also almost certainly figments of the artist's imagination. Much more smartly dressed -- their clothes are trimmed with expensive lace collars -- they contrast sharply with the barefoot milkmaid and her friend. Clearly the former belong to the world of the grand house, while the two peasants keep to their 'place' in the fields. But in the quiet of this summer’s evening, both couples have time to stop and talk.

Aert van der Neer was an Amsterdam-based painter who specialised in landscapes at dawn and dusk, such as this one, and paintings depicting fires, but he also tapped into a demand for landscapes transformed by moonlight or by frost or snow. Often his skies are turbulent, characterised by dramatic billowing clouds. Here the mood is much more tranquil. Only a few low clouds roll around the horizon, while a single dark grey rain cloud has drifted into view.

This painting probably dates from the early 1650s and it once bore the falsified signature of Aelbert Cuyp. This was probably added to try to increase its value. The pastoral scene and the way the painting is backlit by a luminous sky are somewhat reminiscent of Cuyp’s paintings, which were highly popular with collectors during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Style: Baroque
A small saint, hands clasped and gazing at the ground, stands against a dark background. This is Saint John the Evangelist, and he comes from a polyptych (a multi-panelled altarpiece) painted by Jacopo di Antonio in Florence in around 1450.

Several other panels from the Pratovecchio Altarpiece are also in our collection. This one would have been at the top, to the right of a scene of the Crucifixion (now lost). The saint's exaggerated features and expression of pain and distress show his emotional response to the death of Christ, which he witnessed.

The artist was heavily influenced by the emotional intensity of Florentine painter Andrea del Castagno and by Donatello's sculptures. The strong contrasts of dark and light in the complex folds of the draperies and the shadows cast by the figures in the altarpiece create an illusion of three-dimensional space, so that they seem like statues standing in niches rather than flat paintings.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
We don't know where this castle and the surrounding landscape is located, but they are likely to be based on scenes Hendrik Frans van Lint saw when he was living in Italy. He was working with a group of Dutch and Flemish artists who returned home to the Netherlands to paint the mountainous scenery and soft, clear light of Italy. Van Lint shared in the popularity of these paintings with Northern European audiences. In this picture, he has opted for a cooler sky to bring out the sombre grey walls of the castle.

Like several other Italianate painters, van Lint sometimes enhanced the grandeur and lyricism of a scene by the addition of classical figures. In the foreground of this picture, the strolling couple are thought to be the Trojan hero Aeneas and the Sibyl, a priestess of Apollo who told fortunes. She foretold his death after many battles, but agreed to guide him to find his dead father in the underworld before his troubles began.

Style: Baroque
The violent scene in this small Orientalist painting is an example of an imagined view of the Middle East. It depicts a white woman being attacked by a Middle-Eastern man who wears a turban. The dagger in his raised right hand points down directly towards her as he clasps her waist with his left arm. Her head is thrown back, exposing her throat as she raises her left arm to defend herself. Another man lies dead in front of them, his turban having fallen from his head.

This small unsigned picture probably dates from the early nineteenth century. We do not know who painted it, but it was previously credited to Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps (1803–1860), who was a pioneer of Orientalist painting in France. Orientalism – the imagined view by Europeans of the cultures within a region spanning from Turkey to the Middle East and North Africa - reached its peak in the nineteenth century. Like many other painters and writers of this tradition, the construction of a monolithic ‘East’ in their works expressed both the desires and the delusions of the Western world.

Orientalist art often evoked a fantasy of escape, as in the depictions of harems or exoticised interiors. It also carries imperialist undertones. Scenes of brutality, violence and cruelty perpetrated on white people by imaginary villains of Middle-Eastern or African descent were particularly popular. Made in the age of Europe’s colonial expansion, such paintings could serve as political propaganda. For example, in the 1830s after France colonised Algeria, Eugène Delacroix completed several of his major Orientalist pictures.

Decamps’s paintings are often characterised by dramatic action and striking contrasts of light and dark. This picture may also be a reference to a sixteenth-century painting, possibly Italian.

Style: Realist, Neoclassical
The Virgin Mary and Christ Child are seated on a wooden throne with steps, raising them above the other figures. To their right is Saint Dominic, who founded the Dominican Order in the twelfth century; on the other side is Saint Catherine of Siena, who was also a member of the Dominicans in the fourteenth century. Both hold lilies, the symbol of Saint Dominic, and wear the black-and-white Dominican habit (uniform). The kneeling figures in front of Saint Catherine are the donors -- the people who commissioned the picture.

The artist who made this work painted in the style of the fifteenth-century Umbrian painter Pietro Perugino; he was probably working in the following century, rather than as a member of Perugino's workshop. His figures lack a sense of three-dimensionality, but he has attempted to imitate the renowned 'sweetness' of Perugino's figures which, like these, have softly rounded faces with delicate features.

Style: High Renaissance
A gentleman and lady sit in an open carriage. Their identities are unknown -- the brow-bands and rosettes on the horses provide no clue -- and it is not clear if they are married. Both are fashionably but not ostentatiously dressed for a drive in the country on what appears to be a summer's day. Although the lady's wide-brimmed hat may not be the most practical choice for an open carriage, her legs are covered by a blanket and both their jackets are buttoned up tight. The driver leans forward slightly, perhaps bringing the carriage to a halt to greet us. Both look directly at us, their open faces framed by their hats, as if inviting us to share their experience or to admire their new carriage and its fine pair of horses.

The carriage they are seated in was known as a ‘phaeton’ -- a reference to Phaethon, the son of Helios. In Greek mythology, Helios drove the chariot of the sun across the sky each day. As the personification of the sun, he became increasingly identified with Apollo, the god of light. A phaeton was usually pulled by a pair of horses and was driven by its owner, rather than by a coachman, who would also decide on the choice of decorations and paintwork. With lightly sprung lightweight bodies mounted high on large wheels, phaetons were built for speed and were particularly used for recreational driving and racing. Gentlemen-drivers seeking to display both their skill and sartorial style belonged to clubs such as the Benson and the Four Horse Club, which had regular meetings in Hyde Park or Richmond. The painting's rural setting may be a reference to one of these parks. Given the potential danger involved in racing these carriages, the association with Phaethon was especially apt: he had tried to drive his father’s chariot, but lost control and almost set the earth on fire.

A valuable status symbol like a modern luxury car, the phaeton is very much the centrepiece of this painting. Stubbs pays great attention to the buff-coloured undercarriage, as the crane-neck construction of this model, clearly visible above the front wheels, enhanced its manoeuvrability. He positions the phaeton at a slight angle against the dark foliage of the trees to reveal the intricate mechanism, which he paints with the precision of a technical drawing.

Style: Neoclassical, Georgian
These two panels showing Saints Dorothy and Margaret are fragments of a larger painting which probably showed the Virgin Mary and Christ Child seated in a garden surrounded by female saints. The other saints probably included Agnes and Catherine. The panels come from a chapel in Lippstadt in the region of Westphalia in western Germany.

There are several other panels in the National Gallery's collection painted by the same anonymous master. He has been named after the altarpiece that he painted for the Benedictine abbey at Liesborn, fragments of which are also in the Gallery's collection.

Style: Early Renaissance, Gothic
This altarpiece is a polyptych (a multi-panelled altarpiece) but parts of it are missing. The two halves were not originally next to each other, but were on either side of a painting of the Assumption of the Virgin formerly in San Giovanni Evangelista, Pratovecchio, Tuscany.

The altarpiece was originally made for the Camaldolese nunnery in Pratovecchio. The Camaldolites were a reformed Italian branch of the Benedictine Order, famous for their strict lifestyle. Monks and nuns lived in hermitages rather than in communal buildings, coming together only to eat and pray.

Renaissance Italian altarpieces came in many shapes and sizes, depending on where they were to be placed and on how much their patrons could pay. A larger polyptych from Pratovecchio is also in our collection: the Ascension of John the Evangelist Altarpiece, made for the high altar in the 1420s.

This altarpiece is smaller and must have been in a side chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary; church rules said that images on altarpieces generally had to reflect the dedication of the altar on which they sat. Very unusually, we know quite a lot about the commissioning of this altarpiece and the intentions of its patrons.  A document in the nunnery records that in June 1400 one Michele di Antonio Vaggi, a Camaldolese monk, made a will naming his mother Johanna as his main beneficiary. He asked her to found a chapel at San Giovanni Evangelista, for which she was to provide a 'tavola picta' (a painted altarpiece) and other furnishings. Saints Michael and John the Baptist, Michele and Johanna's patron saints, appear in the main tier of the altarpiece and there are various Camaldolite saints in the pilasters. This must the 'tavola picta' made for the family's chapel, and is one of the few surviving Renaissance altarpieces to have been commissioned by a woman (another is Crivelli's The Virgin and Child with Saints Francis and Sebastian).

Johanna herself made wills in 1405 and 1415, but possibly lived much longer, as stylistically the altarpiece should be dated to the 1450s. The artist, Jacopo di Antonio, added figures to Giotto's Badia altarpiece (Uffizi, Florence) in 1451 and died in December 1454. Both Johanna and Michele's wills were copied into the nunnery's records in 1440, perhaps after the death of one or the other; presumably the commission for the altarpiece was not put into effect until this point.

We don't know exactly when the altarpiece was split up. The main panel showing the Assumption was still in San Giovanni in 1914, and our panels were there in the early nineteenth century. The nunnery at Pratovecchio had been closed down by 1810, and these panels, along with others from the same church, were in a private collection in Florence by 1845, where they were probably put into their current frame. The frame was regilded in 1858 and it is impossible to tell how much of it is modern and how much medieval. The paint surface is covered with a layer of old, discoloured varnish.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
We do not know the identity of this elegant young lady. Her clothes are not especially extravagant and she was perhaps a gentlewoman rather than an aristocrat. In line with fifteenth-century fashion, her hair is shaved from the front of her head to make her forehead look higher, and her veil is brought down below her eyebrows. The artist has raised her ears to make her neck look longer.

Her brown gown seems to be made of wool, with contrasting collar and cuffs of a dark blue material, possibly damask, and a purple silk belt. The V of her neckline is filled by a red pièce, held in place by blackish laces. A low, truncated cone of yellow, patterned with white and edged with a golden band, sits on her head. An M-shaped headdress is pinned over this, made of a veil which has been folded so as to come down over her forehead and ears, where it seems to be held in place by a metal fitting of some kind. The pins in her hat and in the scarves at her neck are yellow, perhaps gold.

The painting is a good example of Rogier van der Weyden's style of portraiture. A similar, slightly smaller portrait in Washington (National Gallery of Art) is securely attributed to the artist and is of markedly higher quality, both in drawing and execution. Our painting should be attributed to an assistant or follower, who had learned much from his mentor and who may have been trying to emulate the Washington portrait or something like it. Some idiosyncrasies of this portrait -- the exaggerated tear ducts, the emphasis on the lower linings of the eyes and the shape of the mouth -- are also found in an image of the Lamentation (now in the Mauritshuis, The Hague) which was also probably painted in van der Weyden's workshop. Perhaps the same painter worked on both pictures.

The discreet shadows cast on the background by the sitter and frame create a sense of three-dimensional space. They are not found in surviving portraits attributed to van der Weyden, but are seen in Marco Barbarigo by Jan van Eyck and in Mater Dolorosa and Christ Crowned with Thorns by the workshop of Dirk Bouts. They are early instances of what was to become a popular convention in sixteenth-century painting.

On the back of the panel is a very damaged painting of  Christ crowned with thorns. It is unusual, although not unique, to find a religious image on the back of a portrait. Although it resembles in some ways the heads of Christ in van der Weyden's other paintings, it is not possible to say whether it was painted at the same time or in the same workshop.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
This  shaved, or tonsured, priest once stood on the right side of a small altarpiece which Crivelli painted for the church of San Domenico, in Ascoli Piceno, in the Italian Marche. He is Saint Peter Martyr, the second saint of the Dominican Order, and their first martyr. Peter clasps his hands in prayer, and raises his eyes to look up at the 'Lamentation over the Dead Christ' which once topped the altarpiece. The falcastro, a long-handled curved knife, with which he was murdered splits his skull, and a second dagger is thrust into his shoulder.

His black and white robes stand out powerfully against the scrolling damask patterns of the burnished gold ground. In a detail typical of Crivelli, the toe of his shoe juts out over the edge of the marble parapet, casting a shadow on the step below, and curls up so we can see its sole. With a love of realistic detail reminiscent of Netherlandish painters such as Rogier van der Weyden, Crivelli has picked out the individual hairs in Peter's eyebrows and tonsure and the veins that pulse in his forehead.

Saint Peter was especially important in the Italian Marche, where he had lived and preached for many years, as a bitter campaigner against heresy. Born in Verona in 1206 to parents who were heretics, Peter joined the Dominican Order in the 1220s and became one of its most fervent preachers. In 1251 the Pope made him Chief Inquisitor for Milan and Como, an office which he carried out with such enthusiasm that the heretics of northern Italy hired two assassins to kill him.

On 6 April that year Peter was walking from Como to Milan when he met one of these assassins, Carino da Balsamo, outside a wood. Carino struck Peter several blows on the head with his falcastro and Peter fell to the ground. He clung to life, reciting the Creed -- an early statement of Christian faith still widely used in Christian liturgy --  and is said to have written its opening words, 'Credo in Unum Deum' ('I believe in one God'), in his own blood. To finish him off, Carino stabbed him through the heart with a dagger. Peter's body was carried to Milan, miracles ensued and he was swiftly canonised. Carino, his murderer, repented and became a friar himself. Here, Peter was the counterpart of Saint Jerome at the other end of the altarpiece, both stalwarts of Catholic orthodoxy.

Crivelli was skilled at exploiting the optical effects of the different gold surfaces. The contrast between the damask tooling of the gilded background, and the flat burnished gold and raised pastiglia of his halo must have acted as a spotlight on his face in the candlelight of a medieval church. The blade of the falcastro and the swirling handle of the dagger are burnished silver -- now tarnished -- and must also originally have shone brightly. Crivelli's skill as a painter of drapery is such that although Peter's robes are black we can see the deep folds where his hood and cloak fall around his shoulders, and the creases in the tops of his shoes.

Style: Early Renaissance
A family take a break while on a journey, resting beneath a tree as their cattle and goats wade into a shallow pool. The two young children watch the animals attentively, one raising a long stick in an attempt to herd them. Beyond, a winding dirt track leads us into the painting and towards a hilltop village. A handful of people climb this path -- two figures in long robes, and a herdsman and his animals are higher up.

Zuccarelli mainly worked in Venice but visited England twice during the 1750s and 1760s, following in the footsteps of his near contemporary Canaletto. His idealised Italian landscapes were popular among English collectors, and he was a founding member of the Royal Academy in London. This work could have been painted during his stay in England or on his return to Italy.

Style: Rococo, Neoclassical
The inscription at the top of this picture tells us the sitter is Dürer's father, Albrecht the Elder, depicted at the age of 70 in 1479. Albrecht the Elder was a goldsmith who trained his son in the craft. Originally from Hungary, he settled in the city of Nuremberg in 1455, where Albrecht the Younger was born in 1471.

Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, visited Nuremberg in 1636, and was presented with two pictures by Dürer as gifts for King Charles I of England: a self portrait (now in the Prado, Madrid) and this painting of his father. When Charles was executed in 1649 the paintings were sold. This portrait entered the National Gallery's collection in the early twentieth century. There are actually four versions of the picture, but it is clear that ours was the work given to Charles: it is the only one that matches the description in the 1639 inventory, where the sitter is described as having a black cap, and 'a dark yellow gown wherein his hands are hidden in the wide sleeves painted upon a reddish ground all crack’t'.

The cracks mentioned in the inventory developed when the single thick layer of paint was drying, but due to restoration they are no longer visible. The way that the paint was applied to cause the general streaky effect of the background, as well as the 'drying cracks', is not typical of Dürer; the colour of the background is also not found in any of his other pictures. He was much more likely to paint a dark background or a landscape. The unusual technique suggests that the picture is probably a copy dating to the later sixteenth century.

It might seem strange that Arundel was presented with a copy as a gift for the King, but it was common for copies to be made after works by artists as famous and highly regarded as Dürer, and many were produced in the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. After Dürer's death the desire for copies of his works increased, spurring on their production. The Nuremberg authorities probably didn't know it was a copy or if they did, it didn't matter to them.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance