wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
John Plampin is portrayed here aged about 25. He was born in Shimpling, near Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, the eldest son of John Plampin and his wife Ann. The portrait was probably painted about five years before John inherited the manor of Shimpling and Chadacre Hall from his father in 1757.

Gainsborough shows Plampin on Plampin land. The church tower in the background, though brushed in with only a few touches of near-transparent grey paint, is recognisable as All Saints, Lawshall, about two miles from Chadacre Hall.

Plampin went to Jesus College, Cambridge, in 1746 but appears to have left without taking a degree. After succeeding to the Chadacre estate he cultivated his lands and lived the life of a country gentleman. He married Elizabeth Frances Hervey-Aston, granddaughter of the 1st Earl of Bristol, whose home, Ickworth, was the nearest great house to Chadacre.

He is fashionably dressed in a deep blue frock-coat trimmed with gold braid, a white satin waistcoat with gold-tasselled frogging, black breeches and a tricorn hat with a sharp front pinch, as worn by those with military and sporting interests. His square-buckled flat black leather shoes are suitable for a country walk. Plampin is accompanied by a small gun-dog, probably a pointer cross. Gainsborough reused the dog's pose in other Suffolk portraits of the 1750s.

Plampin's hand is tucked into his waistcoat, following the rules in a contemporary book of deportment that set out how an elegant man should carry himself. He is seated on a bank with his legs splayed, which is an unusually relaxed position for a portrait, and gives the sense that this confident young man sits as he pleases. The limbs, or branches, of the tree mirror the position of Plampin's legs, creating a composition with radiating spokes like a wheel. Plampin is portrayed at ease in the land that he owns. Indeed he is so at ease in nature that he is actually sitting on the ground. Nature is used in the portrait to reinforce Plampin's authority and privilege as a member of the British landed gentry, which is presented as part of the 'natural' order.

Plampin's pose may derive from the French painter Watteau's portrait of Antoine de la Rocque, of about 1719, which depicts a war veteran sitting under a tree with his wounded leg stretched out before him. Artists in England could have known de la Rocque's pose through a widely circulated engraving of about 1734. Hogarth adapted the pose for the drunken rake with his leg up on the table in his series of engravings The Rake's Progress, and Gainsborough's friend and teacher, Francis Hayman, used it for several paintings including his double portrait of David Garrick and William Windham (National Portrait Gallery, London), of about 1745. An earlier example of the pose, which may have been in Gainsborough's mind, is the piping shepherd in Rubens's Pastoral Landscape with a Rainbow (State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg). Rubens's shepherd, like Gainsborough's fashionably dressed Plampin, is free to enjoy the beauty of nature as he stretches out beneath a spreading tree.

Style: Rococo, Neoclassical, Georgian
This is the night before the Crucifixion. Jesus, knowing that he will be betrayed and die on the Cross, has left the apostles after the Last Supper and taken Peter, James and John to watch over him while he prays on the Mount of Olives. However, they have fallen asleep.  On the left, Saint Peter in yellow leans his head against his right hand, while the other hand grasps the sword with which he will cut off the ear of the high priest's servant. On the right, James sleeps wrapped in a red cloak, with John behind him.

Christ, kneeling on the rocky ground of the Mount, has asked, 'Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done' (Luke 22: 42). An angel has appeared to comfort him. It bears the cup from which Christ will have to drink, and points to a vision of the  Instruments of the Passion: the Cross, the crown of thorns, the column of the Flagellation, the sponge soaked in vinegar he was given to drink, and the shaft of the spear which pierced his side. In the background Judas leads the soldiers coming to arrest Christ into the Garden of Gethsemane: one carries a lamp, the light of which gleams on their armour.

Ludovico Carracci produced several small paintings of this subject for private devotion. This is the earliest surviving version, painted in the late 1580s. Ludovico's starting point was  Correggio's small painting of the same subject (Apsley House, London), where Christ is also dressed in blue and white and the angel is similarly elegant, although the composition is quite different. Ludovico is more interested in the narrative, and the nervous energy in this painting creates a dramatic effect. The figures of Christ, Peter and John, together with rocks of the Mount, form a solid wide-based triangle at the front, which is expanded by the larger triangle made by the opposing diagonals of the angel and the dark hillside behind Christ. Ludovico has undermined the stability of this shape, however, by placing Christ off-centre. The towering cross and the soldiers at opposite sides and on different levels further unbalance the composition, and feel as if they are pressing in on Christ, leaving him no room for escape. The angel seems more compelling than comforting, and Christ's body rotates awkwardly backwards as he looks up at him piteously. Even the indifference of the sleeping apostles is pushing him towards the Cross and his death upon it.

The drama and emotion are increased by the use of different sources of light. The soldier's lantern and the silvery glimmer of the moon peeping over the cloud leave Judas, his companions and the rocky landscape almost in darkness. They fade to insignificance beside the golden glow of the aura behind the instruments of the Passion, which lights up Christ and the angel, and just touches the sleeping apostles. The shadows and betrayals of this world are to be banished by the heavenly brilliance of the Christian future.

Style: Baroque, Academic
In the shadow of a group of Roman ruins, a nude woman stands on a low rock with her back to us, her long hair caught up to reveal shoulders and narrow waist. She holds a bucket and her long, pink shawl flutters in the breeze. Her pearly white flesh glows against the dark foliage in the background, and giant leaves curl at her feet.

A young lad crowned with a wreath of leaves gazes at her. He is cradled in a peasant woman's lap; she appears to be trying to turn his face away from the voluptuous figure. Up on the hillside, a bearded old man walks through the woods, close to figures in classical dress dancing to a tambourine. Below them is the entrance to a cave or rough building shuttered with long poles. Lower down the hillside a man takes a woman by the hand and points the dancers out to her.

This would be a good beginning to the illustration of a classical story. But which story? Suggestions have been made, but none quite fits the characters van Uyttenbroeck shows. Perhaps it doesn't matter. At this time, landscape painting was still considered a lower form of art than pictures of historical or biblical events or classical myths. Many artists were fascinated by the problems that landscape painting presents -- how to show light on various textures, how to show distance on a two-dimensional surface. But in order to paint landscapes they needed a pretext, such as the inclusion of classical figures.

Whatever myth he originally intended, the purpose of van Uyttenbroeck's picture is clear. The figures are an excuse to paint a lush, detailed view, using texture and light to lead the eye from place to place in an imaginary landscape. Several Dutch artists at the time had been to Italy and returned to paint landscapes in a soft, mellow Mediterranean light. Van Uyttenbroeck shared their enthusiasm for such rustic scenes but didn't go to Italy himself. His rural idyll has a cooler northern light. His clouds are grey, diminishing into the distance, balancing the burgeoning trees on the hillside. He paints animals, especially the silky hair of the goats, with a fluid brush; he picks out details of horns and floppy ears, and soft eyes that gaze at us as if we have interrupted their grazing.

Van Uyttenbroeck probably took the Roman ruins from one of the many engravings of Roman monuments available in the Netherlands. The rest of the landscape he would have made by putting together sketches he had made in the open air and assembled to paint in the studio, partly from life, partly from memory -- the whole from imagination. He enjoys such details as the gnarled branch sticking out over the white cow's head and the glistening water of the river meandering into the distance as much as the distant dancers or the elegant nude.

Style: Baroque
Pietro Longhi has combined an image of gallantry with a glimpse of domestic life -- two maids at the left work at an embroidery frame. The elegantly dressed lady of the house welcomes a dashing gentleman, who is the cavalier of the painting's title. He places his hand on his heart as he bows from the waist, and the lady lightly fans herself and holds a white handkerchief in the other hand. The two lean towards each other, their heads held close together so that their conversation remains private.

The scene has all the charm of the contemporary opera buffa -- a comic performance, usually in Italian, with characters from everyday life -- that was beloved in Venice. Longhi made preparatory drawings for many of his figures; one showing the two women in this painting survives in the Museo Correr, Venice.

A painting hanging on the wall behind shows Diana, the chaste goddess of hunting, partially covered with drapery; her quiver of arrows hangs on a tree and her bow lies on the ground. She is surrounded by cupids who decorate a nude sculpture, possibly of the garden god Pan, who is often associated with sexuality. The figure of Diana could allude to the chastity of the woman in the foreground, and Pan to the amorous intentions of her companion. The background is fairly muted, but Longhi has included flashes of colour in the clothing and decorative details, like the lady's pink floral brooch and the gold embroidered edges of the man's jacket.

The artist was best known for his simple interior scenes, many of which show the private lives of the wealthy, such as A Nobleman kissing a Lady's Hand and An Interior with Three Women and a Seated Man.

Style: Baroque, Rococo, Neoclassical
Boudin was born and grew up on the Normandy coast, and it remained his favourite subject. Although he spent winters in Paris and also ventured further afield to Brittany, Belgium, Holland, the south of France and Venice, he was drawn back to the seaside each summer by the quality of the light and the subtle grey and blue harmonies of the sky and sea.

The weather there may have been bracing, but the towns Trouville and Deauville were rapidly developing into smart holiday resorts, with new hotels and villas -- whose presence is hinted at in the buildings on the right of this picture. Well-to-do holidaymakers from Paris and further away flocked to Trouville's wide sandy beach intent on sea bathing, a newly fashionable pursuit that was thought to be good for the health. Boudin found a ready market for his small scenes that chronicled the summer activity on the Normandy coast. As the critic Castagnary remarked, ‘ Boudin invented a genre. He was the first to think of showing formally dressed Parisians, surrounded by air and sun on stretches of beach where the wind is blowing; this was successful and deserved to be.’

Here well-dressed men and women stroll up and down, relax on chairs or sit on the sand, and nannies look after children by a white bathing hut. The ladies appear to wear bustles, which became the height of fashion in the 1870s.  A flag in the upper right-hand corner flutters in the sea breeze.

Like many of Boudin's small beach scenes, the picture appears to have been painted quickly. A child in the foreground is sketched in with a few rapid dabs of blue and yellow paint, and the briefest of  brushstrokes indicate human activity and sea bathing in the left background. We can make out the poses of the figures and the direction in which they are looking, but it is impossible to distinguish individual facial features. It is the large expanse of sky occupying more than half the canvas that seems to have been Boudin’s chief concern here, rather than precise details of human interaction.

This painting, together with Boudin's Beach Scene, Trouville, was owned by Monet, who also grew up on the Normandy coast and described Boudin as his master, claiming that he had opened his eyes to the beauty of nature. The fashions suggest that the paintings were probably not conceived as a pair, but were painted at different times. Monet was working alongside Boudin during the summer of 1870 and it has been proposed that one of the women in his The Beach at Trouville is Boudin's wife. Unlike that picture, however, which features Monet's family in close-up, the people on Boudin’s beach are anonymous strangers seen from some distance.

Style: Impressionist
The figure in this painting is copied from one of the elders in the foreground of Guercino's Susannah and the Elders (Museo del Prado, Madrid), which illustrates a story in the Old Testament Apocrypha. While she is bathing, Susannah is spied upon by two old men who threaten to accuse her of adultery if she resists their lustful advances.

Guercino's original was made in 1617 for Cardinal Alessandro Ludovisi. The Ludovisi, one of Bologna’s most distinguished families, were early patrons of Guercino. The old man in the original work holds a staff and this has been replaced here with a lamp. This copy is thought to be by an Italian artist, suggesting that it was made before Guercino’s original was sent to Spain in 1664.

Style: Baroque, Academic
The Virgin Mary, seated on the ground in a grassy meadow, adores the sleeping Christ Child on her lap. The oval shape made by her hands as she gently presses her fingertips together in prayer echoes the shape of her face and hairline; the angle of her head as she looks down mirrors the curve of her right hand. This subtle tilt to the right is the only thing that disrupts the symmetry of the triangular shape of her body. This imposing shape, made bolder through the startling blue of her robe, creates a sense of serenity and calm; the Virgin's body is an anchor in the scene.

Giovanni Bellini was one of the first Italian painters to use natural settings to enhance the meaning of his pictures. Here, the still and silent Virgin contrasts with the landscape to create an image rich in meaning. The varying shapes of the clouds, from thin and wispy to fat and fluffy, and the shadows on them give the impression of changeable weather. The oxen in the smallholding behind are rubbing their heads together; the herder, with his arm behind his back, is pacing the land. To the Virgin's left, a snake menaces a crane which raises its wings in fright. This detail has been traced to the famous pastoral odes written by the Roman poet, Virgil -- a literary allusion incorporated for an educated clientele -- and is perhaps a reference to good versus evil (symbolised by the snake). The delicate poplars clothed in miniature lime-green foliage seem to bend in the breeze. Bellini may have been inspired by altarpieces in Venice painted by northern European artists like Jan van Eyck and Dirk Bouts, who had made careful studies of the way light affects how objects -- and the natural world --  appear. The clarity of the light, which casts a pale glow on everything it touches, from the Virgin's right sleeve to the walls of the castle in the distance, suggests it is springtime.

Spring has not yet come to the tree with naked branches where a vulture, a foreboding symbol of death, is perched. The pose of the infant Christ, eyes closed and limbs stretched out, would have reminded contemporary viewers of a type of picture known as the Lamentation, or pietà, which showed Christ after his death lying across his mother's knees. And yet the carefully observed landscape in our picture evokes hopefulness: spring is a time of renewal in nature and of Easter, the moment of Christ's resurrection from the dead.

We don't know who the picture was made for, but there was strong demand in this period for religious pictures that would provoke an intense emotional and spiritual reaction. Bellini achieves this through a landscape setting which is intended to intensify the viewer's personal engagement with the holy figures: they are present within a recognisable space and therefore seem more immediate.

Style: High Renaissance
The unusual shape of this picture is the first clue to its function. X-ray images have shown that it has been cut down: it was originally larger and more elaborate with 12 sides. Panels of this shape were made as trays called deschi da parte. They were given as gifts to pregnant women   and used to bring offerings into her chamber or room during her pregnancy. Sometimes they were given to celebrate the birth of a child. Research has shown that almost half of Florentine families owned a desco da parto. Their popularity shows how important childbirth was in Renaissance Italy when many children did not survive into adulthood. The reverse of such trays were often personalised with the family's coat of arms. This one has been thinned down and the reverse painted over and so we cannot know who the original owner was but it was probably, like Zanobi Strozzi himself, someone from a Florentine family.

Birth trays were commonly decorated with secular imagery drawn from ancient mythology or literature. The popularity of these subjects reflected the increasing knowledge and study of ancient texts and art that characterised the Renaissance period. Here we see the abduction of Helen, the wife of the Spartan king Menelaus, by the Trojan prince, Paris: the action that sparked the Trojan War. This story was recounted in several versions including, most famously, in the Iliad, by the ancient Greek poet Homer. This image is probably based on a translation of a text by Dares Phrygius that tells the Trojan side of the story, a version that was popular in this period. Phrygius stresses that Helen's capture was welcome, since she fell in love with Paris at first sight, making it an appropriate subject for a birth tray.

Helen, with three feathers in her hat, is at the centre of the scene on the shoulders of a young blonde man. Paris, in the meantime, also blonde and dressed in armour with red ties, waits to take Helen on to the large boat moored nearby. Three other women are also seized -- two within the temple itself while another appears to embrace her captor.

Phrygius' version set the abduction at the Temple of Apollo on the Greek island of Cythera, a backdrop that allowed Strozzi to embellish the picture with delightful details. Boats with billowing sails fill the sea; fortified hillside towns encircle the slopes of the mountainous island across the water. The architecture of the temple is similar to that of a Florentine palace belonging to the Rucellai family which was built at about the same time that this tray was painted -- the only hint that it is a temple is the statuette of the deity on a column at its centre. A little boy, perhaps a reminder of the child in whose honour the tray was given, darts across the flowery lawn away from the chaos inside the temple. The charm of these details reflects Strozzi's main occupation as a manuscript illuminator; the small scale of book decorations inviting such attention to detail.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
Angry to find that the Temple of Jerusalem was like a market because of the money-changers and dove-sellers there, Christ drove them out using a whip (Matthew 21: 12--13; Mark 11: 15--18; Luke 19: 45--6; John 2: 14--17). Here he is poised in the centre, right arm raised above his head, about to strike a money-changer who has fallen on one knee. His table has tipped over, scattering the tools of its owner's profession: coins spill out of a blue bag, and an inkpot, quill pen and papers have been knocked to the ground.

Sometimes called the Purification of the Temple, this subject took on great significance in the sixteenth century, when the Catholic Church initiated a series of self-imposed reforms in response to the Protestant Reformation. Another example from our collection is El Greco's Christ driving the Traders from the Temple, whose composition is equally full of movement and Christ, dressed in red and blue, plays a pivotal role at its centre.

The drama and subtle colouring of the work are typical of  Bernardino Cavallino, the most individual and poetic painter active in Naples in the first half of the seventeenth century. Described in the eighteenth century as 'the Poussin of Naples', he is best known for his small cabinet pictures of biblical subjects or themes taken from classical history.

Around 80 paintings by him survive, but documentary evidence for his life and work is almost non-existent and the complex sources of his highly personal style remain obscure. He seems to have blended Ribera's intensely observed naturalism with an awareness of the works of Van Dyck and  Rubens, both of whom were represented in collections in Naples, and of the later Italian works of Simon Vouet. His style has been particularly related to that of his Neapolitan contemporary Antonio De Bellis.

Cavallino's lively multi-figure compositions are highly theatrical in pose and expression: he had a taste for subjects where figures engage in violent emotional confrontation, as here, and his paintings have been described as like vignettes from plays, in which figures are caught mid-action. They feature Caravaggio-like contrasts of light and shade, with illumination striking one part of the body but leaving the rest in shadow, as on the back of the man in the left foreground. Cavallino studied closely details of everyday life -- here the beautifully observed black-and-white dove provides a moment of stillness in an otherwise action-packed scene.

This picture is thought to be a mature work, dating to about 1645--50. Many of Cavallino's pictures were produced as part of a series, or in pairs, and were destined both for private patrons and the open market. The pendant to this picture may be Cavallino's Procession to Calvary in the Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia. The two canvases are of similar dimensions and both compositions are structured around Christ in the centre, with bystanders nearby and two seated or standing figures in the corners who turn in towards the action -- a clever device drawing us into the picture with them.

Style: Baroque, Academic