wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
This painting formed the central pinnacle of a large, multi-panelled altarpiece made for the church of San Pier Maggiore, Florence. To its left and right were panels showing seraphim, cherubim and adoring angels.

This image represents the Trinity, the three-fold Christian divinity which consists of God the Father, Christ, his son, and the Holy Ghost. God the Father appears as a large figure dressed in a blue robe over a red tunic, with both a halo and a crown. He holds up the Cross upon which Christ is crucified and makes a blessing gesture with his right hand.

Christ is shown after his death, still hanging on the Cross. His limbs and torso are gaunt; his diaphragm and the bones of his ribs show through his skin. Blood pours from the wounds of his palms, side and feet. Above his halo hovers the Holy Ghost, depicted traditionally in the form of the dove.  The dove is shown beak down, wings up as in the scene of the Pentecost in the tier below.

The Crucifixion is not represented in the sequence of narratives in the tier below; it is shown here instead. The symmetrical format of the picture and its simplicity is appropriate for its central position at the very top of the altarpiece, high above worshippers, where its bold colours and simple shapes would ensure it stood out.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
A herdsman heads across the scene with his cows to follow the path away to the right. The evening light catches his white shirt and the tops of the tumbling waters of a stream at his side. A slender birch tree seems to cling on to the side of the rocky slope, its tall trunk vanishing into the darkness of the woods overhead, lending height and wildness to the atmosphere of the scene.

This mountainous landscape is imaginary, painted in the Italianate style popular in the Netherlands in the seventeenth century. We don't know if Huysmans had ever been to Rome but he knew artists who had. He was able to refer to their sketches and drawings to produce his softly lit views of the Roman countryside.

Style: Baroque
This young woman appears to have been startled by something -- she turns towards an unseen disturbance to the right and clasps her blouse to her chest. Although Dubufe was well known as a portraitist of the French aristocracy, the identity of this woman is unknown. Her state of semi-undress suggests that this picture was not intended to depict a particular person, but may instead have been based on a model.

Dubufe has based the woman's pose on a famous Greek marble sculpture from the first century BC, known as the Medici Venus. It shows the goddess with her head positioned towards the right and her right arm clutched to her chest. Unlike the woman in this painting, the sculpted Venus is completely nude.

The plain, dark background emphasises the woman’s porcelain white skin and her flushed pink cheeks, and her striking amber-coloured eyes glow in the warm light. The smooth skin of her face and neck was created with feathery brushstrokes of pink, white and subtle blue tones, while thicker layers of paint give her arms a sense of three-dimensionality. Fine, delicate brushstrokes make up her glossy black hair, with bright highlights to show the reflection of light.

Some pentimenti can be seen in this picture -- Dubufe has made the woman's right shoulder slightly wider than was originally planned, painting over some of the background paint with a pale flesh tone. This painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1828.

Style: Neoclassical
We are clearly looking into heaven in this painting. The Virgin Mary sits on a carved and gilded throne, the Christ Child standing on her lap. On either side are two saints, identified by the gilded inscriptions on their haloes: Catherine of Alexandria, dressed as a princess, and Catherine of Siena, in the habit of a Dominican nun. The figures are linked by their hands: the Virgin holds Catherine of Siena's hand, while Christ places a ring on Catherine of Alexandria's finger (the saint had a vision of herself as a 'bride of Christ' and, because of this, refused to marry the Roman emperor).

This kind of composition is known as a sacra conversazione ('holy conversation'). The Virgin, Christ and the saints are shown in a single unified space rather than split between different parts of a polyptych. These still, calm figures painted in bright colours and lit with a clear light are characteristic of Ambrogio Bergognone. Although he was a contemporary of radical High Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci, who was also in Milan from about 1482, Bergognone's almond-eyed virgins with their silvery skin tones hark back to Lombard painting of an earlier era, in particular the work of Vincenzo Foppa, with whom he perhaps trained.

Although Bergognone seems to have been unaffected by Leonardo's dramatic compositional and atmospheric effects -- the work couldn't be more different to 'The Virgin of the Rocks' -- this is very much a painting of the High Renaissance. Bergognone was fascinated with the kind of perspectival effects which had arrived in Milan with the painter and architect Bramante in the early 1480s. To fool us into seeing a three-dimensional space on a flat panel, he has made it seem as if we are looking up into a Renaissance loggia (an open-sided gallery or room) -- you can see its coffered ceiling and the receding curves of its lateral arches with their different coloured stones. The same interests appear in the works of his Milanese contemporary Andrea Solario, and more widely in Italian painting, for example The Annunciation, with Saint Emidius by Carlo Crivelli. Like Crivelli, Bergognone played spatial games with his viewers: Saint Catherine's wheel teeters on the edge of the marble step, as if about to tumble off into our world, just like the fruit in Crivelli's Annunciation.

This painting was one of ten Bergognone made for the Certosa (Charterhouse) of Pavia in the late 1480s and early 1490s, including probably The Virgin and Child. It presumably hung in the fifth chapel off the left aisle of the nave, which is dedicated to Saints Catherine of Alexandria and Catherine of Siena. There was originally more to the altarpiece than this single panel; it has lost its frame, which would have covered the arch of unpainted wood around the top, and its crowning lunette, which showed the dead Christ on the lap of the Virgin. The lunette was bought by the National Gallery at the same time as the main panel but was lost at sea while being shipped to England in 1860.

Style: Early Renaissance
Country peasants and smartly dressed gentlefolk assemble for a feast on the rolling hills outside Antwerp, seen silhouetted on the horizon. Cooks are busy preparing the meal in large cauldrons while birds wheel in the sky above, anticipating the pickings soon to be had. A stone cross carved with an image of the Virgin Mary and Christ Child is adorned with wreaths, suggesting that this is a religious celebration.

This composition is almost identical to a painting in the collection of the Duke of Bedford, which is signed by David Teniers the Younger and dated 1646. Though this version bears many characteristics of Teniers’ style, it is of lower quality; it is most probably a copy made in the master’s studio. The genteel group on the lower left have traditionally been identified as Teniers’ family, although some of the same figures appear in A View of Het Sterckshof near Antwerp, where they are thought to represent Jacob Edelheer, the city secretary of Antwerp, and his family.

Style: Baroque
A woman dressed in the white habit of an Augustinian canoness kneels in front of the Virgin Mary and Christ. Mary is seated on a low, L-shaped brick wall topped with turf, with Christ perched on her knee. He holds a string of red beads with a gold tassel on one end and a yellow ring -- perhaps a teething ring -- at the other. We do not know who the patroness is: Augustinian canonesses, or 'White Ladies', had many houses in Brabant and Flanders.

In the background, scattered buildings sit beside two stretches of water; the one on the right is a watermill, with the wheel on our left (look closely and you can see the white splashes of the water turning it). In front of the mill a shepherd and his dog watch over a flock of sheep. People boat on the water, while others walk and ride along the roads on either side of it. In the far distance on the right is the spire of a church.

The artist was clearly impressed by the work of both Gerard David and Joachim Patinir: the figures of the Virgin and Child are like those in David's Adoration of the Kings, painted probably in Antwerp in about 1515; the landscape is comparable to Patinir's Flight into Egypt (Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp), also probably painted in Antwerp in about 1515--20.

The artist might not have known Patinir and David's work directly, but through the painting of Joos van Cleve, who was strongly influenced by both. His style is close to that of Joos' versions of David's figures and Patinir's landscapes: the Virgin's transparent veil is arranged the way that David did it, but this was constantly imitated by Joos; the countryside, the farmhouses, the pond, the flock of sheep and the flat-topped mountain can all be compared with Joos' landscapes.

The artist had many idiosyncrasies, some of which he shared with Joos. Like Joos, he had problems with the relative sizes of things: the plants and grasses in the foreground are too large, while the Virgin's hands are too small; also like Joos, he separated the little finger from the ring finger in a rather unnatural way. He painted better than he drew, sometimes working with great speed and freedom. The sheep are strokes of white, mixed with a little azurite; scattered dots of pure azurite suggest their heads and legs.

It is difficult to suggest a date for the painting, but as the artist might have known Joos' work of the 1520s it may have been painted in around or after 1530; the lady's wide sleeves might be a minor concession to recent fashion.

Style: High Renaissance
Claude painted many landscapes depicting religious or mythological stories. Here, he takes the subject from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, a Latin poem of well-known stories and characters from Greek mythology. The nymph Echo is in love with the beautiful youth Narcissus, who rejects her. The goddess Nemesis punishes Narcissus by making him fall in love with his own reflection. Claude adopts Ovid’s description showing Narcissus gazing into a ‘clear pool with silvery bright water’ (book 3: 407--412).

The castle in the background is not mentioned in Ovid’s story and is probably imaginary or based on ruins in the countryside near Rome where Claude spent most of his life. Claude often painted seaports like the one seen here in the distance. The vast landscape, framed by trees and buildings, shows Claude’s immense skill at creating light and atmosphere. Claude was less skilled at depicting figures, and they are represented here using thin layers of paint and positioned in awkward poses with little attention given to anatomy.

Two nymphs hide in nearby trees: the lower nymph is probably Echo, who according to the story dies leaving only her voice. The figure reclining at the bottom of the painting was originally partially covered with a blue robe has been repainted as nude. The reason for the change in her appearance remains unknown -- this could be the work of Claude himself or a later artist. This figure often appears in paintings as a water nymph: she rests one arm on an urn and a gentle stream flows out of it. Her pose is based on an antique sculpture, called Cleopatra (Vatican Museum, Rome) which decorated a fountain in the Belvedere Palace in Rome. Claude may also have been inspired by the reclining nymph in Titian’s painting The Andrians (Prado, Madrid), which he probably studied in Rome.

The subject of Narcissus and Echo was painted frequently during the seventeenth century but this is Claude’s only known attempt. Painted in 1644 at the height of Claude’s career, it was intended to hang beside its pair, Landscape with a Temple of Bacchus, now in the National Gallery of Canada. Both paintings depict classical subjects, with light coming from different directions in each: the morning light comes from the left in this painting, and an evening light from the right in its pair. These are the only paintings by Claude commissioned by an unknown English patron. However, Claude became one of the most admired and collected painters in England during the eighteenth century.

Style: Baroque, Academic
In an elegant room, a group of cheerful young people crowd around a table that bears a large plate of oysters, a loaf of bread and a single knife. They wear fashionable clothing, some of which is very colourful -- it differs from the sombre black costumes depicted in many Dutch portraits of the time.

The young man sitting at the right is the only person with a drink; he holds the base of a golden drinking cup delicately with one hand. The waiter standing at the right notes down what has been consumed -- perhaps he has already cleared away the dishes and glasses. The crunched up tablecloth also implies that the meal is finished. One gentleman leans nonchalantly on the back of a chair, as if he has just joined the party, while a sullen looking dog lies next to his feet, watching events unfold. A large map hangs on the wall to the left, a framed painting to the right; between them, an open door gives a view of a landscape with large trees.

Dirck Hals specialised in this kind of scenes of groups of people enjoying themselves. Known as 'merry companies', the scenes derive from representations of biblical stories that involved excessive feasts. They were often engraved with moralising verses, which condemned foolish and extravagant behaviour, and it's likely that at least some contemporary viewers would have understood the picture in that sense. The partly visible painting in the background probably shows Christ being arrested by Roman soldiers, an episode that would ultimately lead to the Crucifixion. While religious paintings were no longer commissioned to hang in churches in the Protestant Dutch Republic, they still decorated the houses of the upper and middle classes, and this was a popular subject. The inclusion of this scene within the painting -- a device that Hals often used -- might hint at an underlying moralising message. Likewise, the withering flowers littering the floor display the group’s carelessness and wastefulness (although they might also be seen as a reminder of the transience of life).

Dirck was the younger brother of Frans Hals, who influenced him with his painterly and colourful technique. In fact, Dirck adapted the quick and lively brushwork championed by his brother to his small-scale genre paintings. Just like in his brother's large-scale works, here we find areas where Dirck worked wet-in-wet or made use of the beige ground coming through. He prepared figures in drawings and oil sketches that he would then use, with little alteration, as the basis for figures in his paintings, sometimes even more than once.

Style: Baroque
We are in a tavern, or at least that is what is implied by the objects on the table. There’s an innkeeper's slate -- blank, with a piece of white chalk lying by it unused -- a pack of playing cards, a pipe, a silver cup, a tankard and what is probably a backgammon box. The sleeping woman is either the innkeeper's wife, a serving maid or, possibly, a prostitute. In a way, it doesn’t matter. The painting is not making a judgement about her status or profession but drawing attention to her vices.

Cards and backgammon were used for gambling, which was not a respectable activity for a woman. More seriously, she has been smoking and has probably fallen asleep because she has had too much to drink. The leering men are clearly amused by her state: one seems to use the stem of his pipe to draw open the front of her dress, while his friend looks on and laughs. Even the tavern dog has wandered over, curious to see what is going on.

To the modern eye this is harassment, but in seventeenth-century Amsterdam attitudes were very different. It was not uncommon for women to drink alcohol or to smoke, but female drunkenness was disapproved of in polite society. Tobacco, considered an aphrodisiac, was a potential threat to a woman’s virtue. The Dutch did see a funny side to lax moral behaviour, and scenes like this, where such failings were mocked, were a popular genre.

Metsu’s clients wouldn't have only appreciated the moral-comic theme; they were also connoisseurs of artistic technique. At the time Metsu was a young painter making his way in Amsterdam. Instead of specialising in a particular genre, as most artists did, he became something of a chameleon. He was able to adapt to whatever might be in demand, from interiors like this to portraits, history paintings and still-life paintings. Here he has taken the opportunity to demonstrate his skill at depicting different textures: the pattern and weave of Turkish rug on the table, the sheen of the metal cup, tankard and the dog’s collar, the animal's fur. The faces of the figures are also carefully observed and they form a trio of contrasts, one laughing, one highly focused and one fast asleep, oblivious. The rest of the canvas is more freely painted, which is typical of Metsu’s work at the time.  

Style: Baroque
This panel, the first of a series of three, is based on the story of a young peasant woman called Griselda, as told in The Decameron. Griselda's rich husband put her through a series of tests, and her loyalty throughout the ordeal earned her fame and respect -- she became a model of wifely virtue. The paintings were probably made to celebrate two marriages in the Spanocchi family, which took place in January 1494.

Here we see Griselda meet the Marquis Gualtieri di Saluzzo for the first time, as well as the events leading up to their marriage. The story begins at the left of the panel, with Griselda on her way to fetch water from the well, a pot on her head. She catches the eye of the Marquis, who is out hunting with an entourage of courtiers; the hills above are crowded with horses and dogs following the scent of the prey. Transfixed, the Marquis leans forward on his elegant white horse to take a better look at Griselda, and falls in love immediately.

The craggy hill that formed the backdrop to their first meeting is mirrored on the right by a peach-coloured house, which belongs to Griselda's father. He hurries down the steps as the Marquis approaches to ask for his daughter's hand in marriage. The next scene is less conventional: Griselda has been stripped naked. Humiliated, she covers her white skin with her arms, in the pose of classical sculptures of the goddess Venus known as the Venus Pudica or 'Venus ashamed'. The Marquis hands her new clothes to wear for their wedding. In the centre, the two are married in front of a structure that looks like a triumphal Roman arch, topped with horses and male figures. Griselda is dressed in expensive gold-woven fabrics that match those of the Marquis.

Accounts of the Spanocchi family wedding feast describe a huge temporary arch which was constructed especially for the occasion and, like the one in the picture, it was decorated with statues of famous warriors. The picture contains other details intended to encourage close examination and to entertain the noble patrons. For example, two lean greyhounds pause to watch Griselda's humiliation as she tries to cover herself up, and some of the horses' harnesses are decorated with patterns in real gold.

The painter has planned every detail of the composition carefully, drawing almost all elements before he began to paint. Infrared reflectography shows that even the horses and dogs on the hillside in the upper left were drawn directly onto the panel, the background painted around them before they were filled in at a later stage.

Style: Early Renaissance
Jan Wijnants was from Haarlem, which lies in the narrow corridor of land between Amsterdam and the sea. He specialised in depicting the landscapes around the town, which were formed largely of sand blown inland from the North Sea beaches and into a series of sometimes spectacularly high dunes.

At first glance, this might look like a rocky landscape with a range of hills or mountains that catch the sunlight on the horizon -- but what we can see are, in fact, ancient sand hills, overgrown with grass and woodland. No specific location can be identified as a model for this painting, and -- like many landscapes of the time -- it probably represents an idealised rather than real view.  

In this example, Wijnants has designed a strong and dynamic composition. The line of the fence made of hurdles and wooden staves is followed by an S-shaped track that leads our eye from the foreground, over the top of the dune and into the woods in middle distance. Our gaze passes the man resting with his dog and the herdsman coming towards us with his animals. Beyond, we can just make out a horseman and his guide about to dip over the brow right in the centre of the picture.

These figures and animals are an important addition, helping the viewer to establish a sense of scale and depth, and also adding interest and dynamism to the scene. But they were not painted by Wijnants -- once he had finished the landscape, he would have handed the picture over to a specialist figure painter, in this case probably Jan Lingelbach.

As well as dynamism, there is drama. The dead and dying trees, the fence post and the fallen silver birch log catch the raking light of the early morning sun and form a powerful arrangement of angles right in the foreground of the painting. The detailed depiction of the birch bark makes the log feel very close to the viewer, while the man with his dog -- who can only be a few yards further down the track -- seems much further away. It may be that Lingelbach made a misjudgement and painted him rather too small, or that Wijnants wanted to compress the perspective to make the trees in the foreground seem more dramatic. He achieved a similar effect in another painting owned by the National Gallery, A Landscape with Two Dead Trees, and Two Sportsmen with Dogs on a Sandy Road.

Shortly after he painted this picture Wijnants moved to Amsterdam, where he worked until his death. He often collaborated with other artists, such as Lingelbach and Adriaen van de Velde -- see, for example, another of his paintings in the National Gallery, A Landscape with a Woman driving Sheep through a Ruined Archway.

Style: Baroque