wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
This small painting of a huntsman is probably by Bonifazio or his studio. It is painted on canvas and was probably made to decorate a piece of domestic furniture. It may derive from a series representing the Labours of the Months similar to the later series by a Venetian artist in the National Gallery's collection.

In the background a huntsman follows his hound who chases into the woods after what appears to be a hare. The huntsman in the foreground stands on a stone parapet, which may relate to the painting’s original setting. He has a rabbit tied by its ears to the stick over his shoulder and he carries a spear in his left hand. The two huntsmen are dressed in similar clothes and the two scenes are probably intended to form a continuous narrative.

Style: High Renaissance
Saint Lawrence, a deacon in the early Christian church in Rome, was executed in AD 258 by the pagan Roman authorities, and this painting tells the story of the events that led to his martyrdom.

The Roman prefect Decius ordered Lawrence to hand over the treasures belonging to the Church. Having already distributed these riches among the city's poor, he gathered them instead, claiming that they were the Church's greatest treasures. Lawrence, shown here with a large gilded halo and wearing his deacon's robes, looks towards Decius and gestures towards the people at the bottom of the steps. The group includes a man in ragged robes, perhaps a beggar, and a woman breastfeeding her baby; in the background a disabled man moves towards the group, supported by crutches.

Infrared reflectograms and X-ray photographs have revealed the presence of shields with heraldry and scroll-shaped designs bearing inscriptions, now illegible, at the lower corners (these were all overpainted). The canvas is the fourth in a series of probably seven scenes of the life of Saint Lawrence. It is presumed that they were made for the church of Saint Lawrence in Cologne, but this is not certain.

Style: High Renaissance
This small arched painting shows the Virgin Mary and Christ Child seated in a landscape. Christ, balanced on the Virgin's knee, reaches out to take something -- probably a flower -- that is being offered to him by an angel.

The composition is a free version of The Virgin and Child with an Angel (Upton House, Warwickshire). The figures in the Upton House painting are based on a lost composition by Rogier van der Weyden, the Virgin and Child with a Flower. This was frequently repeated towards or after 1500, especially in Brussels.

The present state of our painting makes it impossible to assess accurately. Under the veils of dirt and varnish it seems to be of very poor quality. The rocky crags and natural arch in the rock are slightly reminiscent of Joachim Patinir but are also found in pictures ​by van der Weyden. It may tentatively be suggested that the picture was painted in Brussels and dated around 1520. The apparently very poor quality could be an indication that it is by an amateur rather than a professional painter.

Style: High Renaissance
This painting shows an episode from the mythological Trojan War, as described by the Roman poet Virgil in the Aeneid. The Trojans rejoice as they pull a large wooden horse into their city, believing it to be a gift from the gods. An inscription in Latin on the horse's side reads 'PALADI VOTUM' (An offering to Pallas). This was another name for the Greek goddess Athena, famed for her wisdom, courage and strength in warfare.

The horse actually conceals a band of Greek soldiers, waiting to attack. In the centre background, we see the arrest of Cassandra, daughter of the King of Troy, who had prophesied disaster if the horse entered the city. She was declared mad but turned out to be correct: once inside Troy, the Greeks took control the city.

This sketch conveys something of the story's epic nature in the feverish activity of the crowd and the horse's looming stature. As in The Building of the Trojan Horse, Domenico has ignored the fact that the horse was a piece of sculpture and modelled it to look like a flesh-and-blood animal, with a close study of its muscular body and the texture of its mane and tail. Here, the pose emphasises the direction in which the row of men are pushing the horse. Another group use all their strength to tug on ropes attached to the horse's sides; one young boy is not quite tall enough to help. The high walls, upon which people gather to catch a glimpse of what's going on, and the sharply receding space lead our eye towards the distant city, which is made up of buildings of different heights and styles. The view of Troy is based closely on ancient buildings in Rome, and the gigantic battlements recall ancient fortifications.

This scene and The Building of the Trojan Horse were intended as oil sketches for much larger paintings. As a preliminary design, Domenico sketched in the outlines of the figures rapidly and then brushed in colour to give a three-dimensional appearance. The colour is rather muted, with ochre, beige and greys, and the only strong colour accent is the woman's red dress at the centre. We know that Domenico painted the monumental pictures in around 1773/4, but the location of the work that relates to this sketch is unknown. The final painting of The Building of the Trojan Horse is now in the Wadsworth Atheneum in in Hartford, Connecticut.

Style: Rococo, Neoclassical
The Christ Child, naked but with a gilded halo, lies on a bed of straw. Golden rays shoot out around him. A sparse timber frame with a thatched roof represents the stable where he was born; its beams rest on the rocky arch of a deep, dark cave which almost fills the background. The towers and roofs of Bethlehem rise on the left.

Kneeling around Christ in adoration are his parents, the Virgin Mary and Saint Joseph, with Saint John the Baptist on the left and Saint Jerome on the right. Standing at the sides are Saint Stephen (on the left) and Saint Nicholas of Bari (on the right). God the Father appears above, flanked by two angels, and blesses his son. Behind the Virgin are an ox and a donkey, which turns its rear to us, oblivious to the miraculous child in the manger. On the far left, behind Saint Stephen, the face of one of the shepherds is visible peering around the frame. The pilasters on either side of the main panel show, from top to bottom, the Annunciation to the Virgin; Saint Peter and Saint Paul; and Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Lucy.

This large painting is the main panel of an altarpiece by Pietro Orioli. It is one of several versions that Orioli painted of this subject, and it demonstrates many of the stylistic features that made him one of the most important and influential painters in Siena in the last two decades of the fifteenth century. Unlike many his contemporaries, who clung to the decorative traditions of Sienese painting, Orioli was fascinated by perspective and naturalism. Here, he has set the sacred story in a believable landscape, with blue sky above and trees and buildings in the distance. The roof frame of the stable recedes along diagonals which, if extended, would converge at a single point behind the cave. The composition is carefully structured around an underlying geometry: the  figures around Christ form a triangle, the apex of which is God the Father. A strong light falls on them from the left, giving an illusion of solid bodies under their clothes. The saints seem engaged in casual conversation, their variety of expressions and gestures very different from the graceful but more static figures of much contemporary Sienese painting.

The shape of altarpiece, with a single panel large enough to include the lateral saints normally separated in polyptychs, was one developed in the fifteenth century. This particular variant of a pala altarpiece, with a curved top, was first adopted by Orioli's master, Matteo di Giovanni, for his Virgin and Child with Saints in the chapel of St Antony of Padua in Siena Cathedral. It was widely adopted and became the most popular format in Sienese territory in the late fifteenth century.

Style: Early Renaissance
A lizard grasps at a shrub and tries to scare off a crane, which has trapped its tail under a clawed foot. A snake twisted around a vine above joins in, its long red tongue visible as it hisses at the bird.

This is one of only two mosaics in the National Gallery's collection as we no longer collect this type of work. It was once thought to be by a Greek artist working in the Hellenistic period (323--31 BC) but is now recognised as an eighteenth-century imitation of an ancient Roman image.

Style: Baroque, Academic, Rococo, Neoclassical
This landscape is one of a number painted by Corot in his later years, which combine a foreground of trees and figures, a lake or sea at the right, and in the left background sunlit buildings descending a hillside. These pictures are often reminiscent of the towns and cities of Italy he had seen during his three visits to the country in 1825–8, 1834 and 1843. While the houses in this view have been left vague in outline, those in a painting such as Souvenir of Castel Gandolfo (about 1865, Louvre, Paris) are more prominent and include a distinctive domed church. As the title ‘souvenir’ suggests, they are evocations of places visited over the artist's life. Corot sometimes interwove elements from different locations in his work, juxtaposing views of such places as the lake at Ville-d’Avray with features of the Italian landscape, using earlier paintings or drawings as reference points, as in The Leaning Tree Trunk.

In the foreground here the figure gathering wood, possibly a woman, has an orange hat, a typical bright accent that Corot would introduce into his landscapes. The same colour, probably cadmium orange, has been used to pick out flowers in the grass. Also characteristic of Corot’s technique is his treatment of the sky, which he painted at a late stage. Around the trees at the left he has added light blue sky paint round over the foliage, and then painted further leaves and branches on top. He also brought the sky over the buildings, with the roof of the house visible between the two trees almost totally obscured by paint.

Style: Barbizon
We don't know who this man is, though similar collars and beards appear in portraits of the 1560s and 1570s. The painting is on paper, mounted on a walnut panel, and is unfinished. It might have been a study, perhaps for one sitter in a group, or possibly a pattern which the artist kept in his workshop and from which finished portraits could be made as required.

Many of the distortions of the face are those practised by Anthonis Mor. The far eye is out of perspective and too large, the shadow behind the nose is oddly dark and narrow, and the ear is not foreshortened enough, so it seems to stick out from his head.

Mor had many assistants -- Joachim Beuckelaer at one time worked as his drapery painter -- and the upper lashes of the sitter's left eye catch the light in a way seen in the work of Sánchez Coello, one of his pupils.

Style: High Renaissance
'The Archers' is one of a small number of outstanding portraits from the early part of Raeburn's career, in which he used an exceptionally accomplished and subtle combination of arresting compositions and dramatic lighting to create a sense of intimacy between the viewer and the sitters.

The portrait was probably painted in about 1789 or 1790, when the subjects were in their late teens. Robert and Ronald Ferguson became members of the Royal Company of Archers in 1792 and 1801 respectively, and the contemporary revival of archery as a fashionable sport appears to have inspired the composition. In 1770 Reynolds, the dominant English portraitist, had exhibited his portrait of two archer friends, Thomas Townshend and Colonel Acland, at the Royal Academy in London (now at Tate Britain, London). However, it is unlikely that Raeburn ever saw that painting and Reynolds’s over-charged, full-length action portrait is quite different to Raeburn’s rational and still approach.

The two Ferguson brothers are shown in a striking and complex geometrical arrangement that plays on tonal contrasts. The left-hand boy’s powdered hair and dominant position imply that he is Robert, the elder brother (although family tradition identifies the brothers the other way round). In a wonderfully outlined profile, he is lit from the left, while Ronald behind him is shown entirely in shadow, gazing out at the viewer while framed in the tautened bow held by his brother. The horizontal arrow precisely divides the canvas in two. The way the figures are arranged resembles a classical sculptural frieze -- appropriate to Scotland of the Enlightenment, when classicism and a renewed interest in antiquity influenced the thought and aesthetics of the country. The stillness, darkness and broad, confident application of paint combine to create a sense of hushed atmosphere, which is at once formal and verging on the romantic. The bold but sensitive manner of painting recalls some of the double portraits of courtiers by Van Dyck in the previous century, such as Lord John Stuart and his brother Lord Bernard Stuart.

Robert Ferguson became a Whig Member of Parliament and succeeded his father to the estate of Raith in 1810. He was a dedicated collector of books and pictures. Ronald joined the Army and had a distinguished and varied career, becoming general in 1830 and also sitting in parliament. The Scottish lawyer and literary figure Lord Cockburn (1779--1854) said of them: 'Nothing could be more beautiful than the mutual affection of these handsome, gentlemanlike, and popular brothers.'

It was works such as The Archers that established Raeburn’s long and successful career as a portraitist. He was the first Scottish artist to be able to pursue such a career from Edinburgh rather than London. The Ferguson family also commissioned other portraits from Raeburn, including a full-length portrait of Robert out shooting with his dog (private collection) of about the same period as The Archers.

The Archers remained in the Ferguson family collection until it was acquired in 2000 by the National Gallery under the Acceptance in Lieu scheme.

Style: Academic, Neoclassical, Georgian
This is one of two panels in our collection which were once probably part of the shutters of an altarpiece made for the high altar of the Benedictine abbey at Liesborn. The shutters would have attached to either side of the  main panel (of which there are several fragments in our collection).

The two shutters were commissioned in 1517, about 50 years after the dedication of the altar in 1465. This is one of four scenes showing events before and after the Crucifixion, which probably decorated the outer faces of each of the shutters. Two are in our collection and six are in the Westphalian State Museum of Art and Cultural History, Münster (one of the six in Münster is on loan there from a private collection). The inner faces of the shutters were probably painted with a single image each but these are now missing.

The Roman governor Pontius Pilate was reluctant to condemn Christ to death, but feared popular unrest if he did not. According to the Gospel of Matthew, he 'took water, and washed his hands before the multitude', saying that he was not to blame for Christ's death (Matthew 27: 24). Here, he is seated on a throne while a servant pours water over his hands into a basin. The woman behind Pilate is his wife, who had told her husband not to get involved in Christ's fate because of a dream she had about him (Matthew 27:19).

Christ stands beside Pilate, his body slumped, looking weary and dejected. The crown of thorns has pierced his forehead, causing blood to run down his face. Despite his obvious exhaustion, Christ is detained by a soldier, a sword at his side, who hems him in with his left leg. An aggressive dog guards the steps, and more armed soldiers are gathered behind Christ, waiting to take him to the site of his execution. Christ's appearance contrasts with the bright colours worn by the other figures, the sumptuous clothing worn by Pilate and his wife and the deep red patterned textile which backs the throne. More glorious than any of these, however, is Christ's gilded halo.

Style: High Renaissance
Michiel Jansz. van Miereveld was one of the most successful portrait painters of the early decades of the seventeenth century. He was a favourite at the Dutch court, and his profile was such that Charles I tried -- unsuccessfully -- to tempt him to come to London.

This portrait, which is (now very faintly) signed and dated just above the sitter’s left shoulder, is a good example of why he was so popular. It is painted with flattering precision. The sitter's face, framed by the white collar, seems almost radiant -- van Miereveld used the light reflected from the elaborate ruff to neutralise the shadows. He also subtly matched the background to the colour of her eyes.

We don’t know who she is, though her rich jewels suggest she was a wealthy woman. Our only clue is a fragment of paper stuck to the back of the picture with the remains of an inscription which may one day help identify her. It reads: Cad(..) rello / ...rta (.) (p?) rello.

Style: Baroque
This half-length portrait is on paper later attached to an oak panel. A young man wearing a slight, almost boyish moustache, looks towards the viewer, his determined expression emphasised by his pose, with his right hand raised to his chest, and his left resting on his hip. He is dressed in a black coat, with a wide collar and turned back cuffs. The costume suggests a date in the mid-seventeenth century.

The painting was bequeathed to the National Gallery in 1906 and entered the collection attributed to the Flemish painter Enrico Fiammingo (Hendrick van Somer, 1607/08 -- about 1655), who worked in Naples where he was a pupil of Jusepe de Ribera. This attribution appeared to be supported by a later inscription on paper pasted on the back of the painting, which was removed by the National Gallery's conservators in 1931. However, the painting does not show any similarities with Enrico Fiammingo’s style, and possibly for this reason it was later thought to be by an Italian painter and described as such in the 1995 National Gallery's Complete Illustrated Catalogue.This attribution is also unlikely, because the picture does not show any Italian influence. Indeed, considering its format and the loose and confident handling, it seems more likely that the artist was from northern Europe, probably the Netherlands. The pose of the sitter also reflects those in portraits, often painted on wooden panels, by artists active in Flanders and the Dutch Republic in the seventeenth century.

The Flemish artist Hendrick van Somer (Enrico Fiammingo) was often confused by early art historians with a Dutch artist with a similar name, Hendrick van Someren (1615--1685), who was born and worked in Amsterdam. This may be why the painting was wrongly attributed to  Enrico Fiammingo on the paper pasted on the reverse of the picture. However, the fact that Hendrick van Someren's work is not well known makes it impossible to establish whether the picture is actually by him on stylistic grounds.

Style: Baroque
King David was a biblical warrior king, who ruled ancient Israel and Judah. Famous for defeating the giant Goliath, he was also a musician and poet, and he is credited with writing many of the Psalms in the Old Testament. The painting is an unusual representation of David, both within Guercino’s oeuvre and more generally. David is not young but not yet old. Vestiges of youth are suggested in his powerfully muscular calves, his pensive yet largely unlined face, and his glossy beard, unmarred with grey. He is presented as a warrior king, poised between his youthful career as a fighter, suggested by footwear that is reminiscent of armour, and his later life as a ruler, poet and philosopher, indicated by his staff, crown and inscribed tablet.

David sits in a rare moment of introspection, looking towards a tablet inscribed with a line from Psalm 86 (87 in the King James and Hebrew Bibles): ‘Glorious things of thee are spoken, O City of God’ (GLORIOSA / DICTA SVNT / DE TE CIVITAS / DEI). David had conquered Jerusalem, but God had not permitted him to build a temple there because of his bloody deeds as a warrior. Here, David contemplates Jerusalem’s glorious future which he will not witness during his lifetime. It is a moving image of a man at a turning point in his life, reckoning with his history and his limits. The luminous colouring and complex psychology exemplify Guercino’s assurance as a painter at the height of his maturity.

The painting was commissioned in 1651 by Giuseppe Locatelli of Cesena, together with a painting of one of the ancient Sibyls. The pairing of King David with a Sibyl had its precedent in medieval hymns; both were considered prophets of the coming of Christ. Locatelli was only twenty-four years old at the time and had recently come into his inheritance following the death of his father in 1649. These paintings were intended as decorations for the remodelled family home.

The painting of King David was completed first. As its original pendant, the Cumaean Sibyl with a Putto (National Gallery), was nearing completion, Prince Mattias de’ Medici paid a visit to Guercino’s studio in Bologna, where he took a fancy to this painting and appropriated it for his own art collection in Florence. Guercino diplomatically omitted to tell Locatelli that he had let the Cumaean Sibyl go to another patron, and painted the Samian Sibyl with a Putto (also National Gallery) as a replacement. King David was sent to Cesena first, arriving in spring 1651, and the Samian Sibyl followed in the autumn of that year. King David and the Samian Sibyl have hung together for centuries, first in Cesena, then, from 1768, in the collection of the Spencer family. They are still displayed in their exceptionally fine matching frames, designed by James ‘Athenian’ Stuart (1713-88) in the mid-18th century, when the paintings were displayed together at Spencer House in London.

Style: Baroque
This portrait may depict Ghirardo Averoldi, a sixteenth-century nobleman from Brescia in northern Italy. An inscription recorded as formerly on the back of the painting read 'Ettore Averoldi Brescia 1865', suggesting that it once belonged to or was bought from Ettore Averoldi in that year. He also sold an altarpiece by Romanino to the National Gallery in 1865.

For many years this portrait was believed to be the one of Ghirardo Averoldi by Romanino recorded as in the Averoldi collection in Odorici's Guida di Brescia (Guide to Brescia) of 1853, but the description of the Romanino painting says Ghirardo was holding a lance. Either the description was incorrect, or this is a different portrait by another artist.

The sitter regards us with a frown. The solid triangular form of his body, swathed in his black silk and velvet costume, makes him appear stern and powerful. The grey highlights of his beard and the white and gold cords hanging from his neck are particularly well observed.

The portrait is painted on wood and it has a wavy surface where the wood has buckled. The highlights in the coat were painted into the black paint while it was still wet. A similarly confident approach can be seen in the Beheading of the Baptist (now in the Accademia, Venice) which is signed by Callisto Piazza and dated 1526. Piazza was a follower of Romanino, painting in his style, and sometimes his work is confused with Romanino’s.

The large collar of the coat and the shape of the sleeves and cap suggest that this portrait was painted about 1528--9. Only one other independent portrait by Piazza is known: the Portrait of Ludovico Vistarini now in the Museo Civico, Lodi. Although Piazza is not recorded as a portrait painter, he included portraits in some of his religious paintings, and the style of this portrait suggests it is by him. However, the thick, creamy paint, the way the beard and hair blends into the shadows, even the flushed colour of the man's face are also characteristic of the works of Romanino and Melone.

Style: High Renaissance