wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
Small-scale images of the Virgin Mary and Christ Child made for private worship were one of Bellini's specialities, and there was intense demand for them. Bellini had a large workshop of assistants who worked under his supervision, producing paintings in his style.

This is one of those works, which is now, unfortunately, in poor condition. It adopts the landscape view and the curtain backdrop found in several of Bellini's own images of this kind (including one in our collection). A shepherd with his flock pauses under a bare tree; leafless trees are found in several of Bellini's pictures, including the Agony in the Garden and Madonna of the Meadow. The distant hills resemble the landscape just outside Venice. Other elements are characteristic of Bellini's works: the infant's nakedness; the marble parapet which separates us from the holy figures; and the cartellino with Bellini's now-damaged signature -- usually included in workshop pictures to prove the master's design and supervision -- which looks as though it has been attached at the last minute.

The marble ledge is probably intended to recall Christ's tomb -- a reminder that, according to Christians, he redeemed humanity through his death in adulthood. It was also often found in portraits of this period, used to reinforce the illusion of the real presence of the painted figures by suggesting a space invisible to us just behind it. The Virgin's veil is pristine and crisp and, in its stiffness, it recalls the fabrics found in another work by Bellini's workshop: The Circumcision.

The Virgin lays her hand on a prayer book, or a Bible -- a reminder perhaps of images of the Annunciation (the moment she was made pregnant by the Holy Ghost), as she is often shown interrupted from her reading. Coupled with the fact that her blue robe almost encloses her child, we are reminded of her role as the mother of God, appropriate for an image made for a domestic space, most likely a family home. But the book's position on the marble ledge might be a reminder that Christ's death was foretold in the Bible, and that this image represents the beginning of the story of humanity's salvation.

Style: Early Renaissance
In this sombre scene a peasant woman, a young girl and two children sit round a table in a dreary room with bare walls. The older girl and woman look straight at us, their furrowed brows, pursed lips and tense gazes creating a feeling of melancholy or despair. The boy concentrates on cutting bread, smiling contently, his hat tipped playfully to one side. In the background a young girl emerges through the gloom -- her appearance ghostlike, her hands clasped together, her stare direct and unsettling.

An intense light coming from the left falls most strongly on the woman and the crisp linen tablecloth. It picks out the plain ceramic jug and the dish, which seem precariously balanced on the edge of the table, the woman’s hand stopping the cloth beneath them from slipping. The family are impoverished but remain dignified: their clothes are simple, but not shabby and torn.

The meaning of the painting is somewhat mysterious. It has been suggested that it represents the three ages of man, because of the different ages of the old woman, younger girl and the two children. But there does not seem to be enough difference between the attitude of the figures to support this interpretation, and we may only be looking at two generations rather than three. The picture has also been called 'Saying Grace', though it is unclear whether the little girl is indeed praying.

The three Le Nain brothers -- Antoine, Louis and Mathieu -- painted many scenes of everyday life experienced by the peasant classes. Such images reflected the intense debates about the proper treatment of the poor across Europe during the seventeenth century, and this was a particular preoccupation of the pious Catholic movement in Paris where the brothers lived and worked. The numerous copies of pictures like this one suggests that there was a substantial market for them, at a time when similar Dutch and Flemish genre scenes were very popular. These small, intimate pictures appealed to middle-class collectors, perhaps the urban landowners who were encouraged in contemporary manuals to treat their farm workers with the greatest respect.

When the painting was cleaned and restored in 1978, X-ray images revealed that it is painted over a portrait of a bearded man turned clockwise through 90 degrees; the pentimenti (alterations made by the artist that have become visible) above the head of the woman in this picture are actually the ruffled sleeve of the man beneath. The large collar of the boy in the painting was typically worn during the 1640s; this helps us to date the work to around 1643, when the brothers were established artists working in Paris.

The National Gallery owns three other works by the Le Nain brothers: A Woman and Five Children, The Adoration of the Shepherds and Three Men and a Boy.

Style: Baroque
The Normandy village of Tourgéville is about two miles inland, but on the coast, between Deauville and Benerville, lies Tourgéville-les-Sablons with its extensive beach. Here, the two jetties at the mouth of the river Touques, which form an entrance to the harbour of Trouville-Deauville, can be seen in the middle distance, to the left of the chalk cliffs. Boudin had painted the jetties from another angle in The Entrance to Trouville Harbour.

Boudin produced The Beach at Tourgéville-les-Sablons in 1893, towards the end of his life, when he was still painting daily despite ill-health. He was certainly prolific: between 1862 and 1895 he produced more than 300 paintings of fashionable holidaymakers on the beaches of Trouville or Deauville. Unlike his earlier paintings of Normandy beaches filled with smart crowds, such as Beach Scene, Trouville, in this airy panoramic view the beach is quite sparsely populated. With a few deft strokes of the brush Boudin has delineated the small groups of figures strolling along the great sweep of sand or sitting by the grass-covered dunes and the ships and steamers plying their way through waves on the horizon. But it is nature and the vast expanse of sky, filled with scudding clouds, that dominates the composition.

Writing over 30 years earlier, the poet and critic Baudelaire, who had seen Boudin's pastel studies of weather effects, had commented that his observations of meteorological conditions were so precise that you could almost tell the time of day and the season by them. Boudin seems to have been chiefly interested here in capturing the freshness of the sea air and the particular quality of light.

Style: Impressionist
Two peasant women and a child stand on the left, and black and white cart horses on the right. In the background two wagons are fully loaded with hay,  a dog perches on top of the one in centre. The skyline of a village, with a bell tower and roofs, is shown in the distance. Monticelli made a number of paintings of peasants at work in the fields, both in his native Provence and elsewhere in France.

Monticelli was born in Marseille in 1824 in very humble circumstances. In the 1850s he moved to Paris where he studied under Paul Delaroche at the École des Beaux-Arts. In the following decade the artist spent his time mostly in Provence, returning to Paris either late in 1868 or early in 1869. He stayed in the capital until forced to flee in the face of the Prussian invasion in 1870. He returned for good to his native Provence, where he seems to have rediscovered a deep interest in landscape. He was back in Marseille late in the spring of 1871. The Hayfield may have been painted around this moment, although it is not known where this particular harvest scene is set.

Monticelli’s pictures of the early 1870s at first glance suggest the work of the Impressionists, particularly in their colours and surface textures. Yet between 1871 and 1886, the year of the painter’s death, his style underwent a most dramatic transformation. With each year his work became freer and more vigorous, his colours brighter and more intense. He made his surfaces thick with impasto, although the wood panel beneath was almost always kept visible as a shadow tone. The style of The Hayfield clearly fits with this stage of the painter’s career.

The National Gallery has a significant group of late works by Monticelli, dating from the 1870s and 1880s, all of which entered the collection in 1956, when they arrived from Tate. However, this painting was acquired through the Sir Hugh Lane Bequest in 1917, which is currently on long-term loan to Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane.

Style: Impressionist
Surrounded by angels, a graceful and ethereal Virgin crosses her hands over her breast and gazes heavenwards. She wears a white garment and a swirling blue cloak.

The scene is bathed in a mellow light, and the Virgin is surrounded by a golden haze of clouds into which angels seem to dissolve. The tip of a crescent moon is visible beneath her feet, a symbol associated with the Woman of the Apocalypse and with the Immaculate Conception (the belief that the Virgin was conceived without sin). The Woman of the Apocalypse is described in the Book of Revelation: 'clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head' (Revelation 12: 1--4 and 14). Here we don't see the crown of stars, though it is included in Velázquez's The Immaculate Conception of a few years earlier, commissioned for a Carmelite convent in Seville.

The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception (the belief that the Virgin Mary was conceived with sin) was popular in seventeenth-century Spain, especially in Seville where Murillo spent his entire career. Representatives of the Catholic Church in Spain, with the support of the Spanish monarchy, fought to make it into a dogma of faith. While a papal bill of 1661 affirmed it, the doctrine was only officially adopted by the Church in 1854. Murillo played an important role in promoting the idea, painting numerous versions of the subject for both ecclesiastical institutions and private collectors during the 1660s and 1670s. The best of these was made for his patron Don Justino de Neve, whom Murillo also painted, which was subsequently acquired by the Hospital of the Venerables Sacerdotes (and is now in the Museo del Prado, Madrid).

Once thought to be by an imitator of Murillo, cleaning work carried out in 1980 revealed a picture of higher quality and the possible participation of the master himself. The lower angels, with expressive hands, twisted bodies and energetic movement, are among the best parts; they are more likely to be by Murillo. As far as we know the composition is original, so this is not a studio replica of a known painting by the artist.

Murillo's contemporary, Juan de Valdés Leal, who had settled in Seville by 1656, painted his own version of the subject, Immaculate Conception with Two Donors, during the early 1660s.

Style: Baroque
This is one of only two surviving images of the Virgin Mary and Christ Child by Gentile Bellini. Its large size suggests that it was probably the central panel of a large polyptych. It has been connected with the apparently now-lost altarpiece that we know Gentile made for the Scuola dei Merciai (the confraternity of the merchants) in Venice.

Gentile tailored the image to Venice and to his mercantile patrons, many of whom must have been involved in the city's thriving trade in luxury textiles. The Virgin's mantle is painted to resemble velvet woven onto cloth of gold in an elaborate pomegranate pattern. This originally Ottoman design (as worn by Doge Leonardo Loredan) was hugely popular for luxury fabrics in Italy. It was adopted by Italian weavers who in turn exported it to the eastern Mediterranean.

The marble steps are covered with an oriental rug that resembles a prayer mat used by Muslims. The rug includes a triangular niche, a reference to the mihrab found in mosques which indicates the direction of Mecca, the most holy site in Islam. Rugs like this date from around the mid-fifteenth century and were popular in Italy as exotic luxury items: one is recorded in the possessions of the Duke of Mantua in 1483. These precious textiles were used for display, not walked upon, and so its position under the Virgin's feet is a sign of her majesty as well as an indication of the reverence due to her.

The coloured marble and porphyry (a purple stone) of the backdrop of the throne reflect many religious buildings in Venice, such as the church of San Marco and the church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli (which was being built at around the time that Gentile painted this picture). The use of this kind of stone in Venice, however, ultimately derived from the architecture of ancient Rome and Byzantium, stressing the Venetian links with the Byzantine world. The design of the throne may also be inspired by a stone seat in the church of San Pietro di Castello in Venice. Originally an Islamic funerary monument, it was later reworked and thought to be Saint Peter's throne. Since it came originally from Antioch in Asia Minor, Gentile may have included it as another example of Venice's links with the lands of the eastern Mediterranean.

Gentile's signature appears in the form of an inscription on the base of the steps. He has added his title, Veneti Equitis ('Knight of Venice'), after his name -- a detail that emphasises his status among his fellow citizens. The artist was knighted for the first time in 1469, so this work must have been made after that date.

Style: Early Renaissance
Aurelia Ciommi was a professional artists’ model in Rome and posed for Mancini some 25 times.  She was known as La Cornacchia (The Crow) -- a hardly flattering but somehow accurate characterisation of her sharp, distinctive features and intense expressiveness. Here, dressed in sombre black, she seems to emerge from a sea of flowers and tinted and crumpled papers spilling out of the canvas, turning to the artist with a smile of delight and amusement. The cause of her pleasure would seem to be a new discovery, the white marble bust of a woman which appears, ghost-like, at the upper right of the canvas amid the same colourful profusion. Is it, as it seems, an Italian Renaissance sculpture by the likes of the fifteenth-century master Francesco Laurana (1430--1502), newly admired around 1900 for his austere and serene depictions of women? Is it a bust of Aurelia herself made to resemble a Laurana? Is it merely another of Mancini’s countless studio props, full of evocative potential? We do not know. Mancini has created an enigmatic image full of questions he refrains from answering, as he had done in many of his previous paintings of Aurelia.

The two contrasting heads -- one static and made of marble, the other full of life and motion -- and Aurelia’s dancing hands which seem to conjure the bust, all are relatively thinly painted. We know what the paint describes. The rest of the canvas is impastoed in paint where detail is lost in the abstract whirl of pure colour thickly applied. We must work to determine exactly what we are seeing. This ambiguity was characteristic of Mancini throughout much of his career and was admired by his collectors as being intensely modern and new.  The painting was soon acquired by the Irish-born collector and curator Hugh Lane, who also sat to Mancini for his portrait in 1906 (Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin) and who intended Aurelia for the Municipal Gallery of Modern Art he established in Dublin in the early twentieth century. He bequeathed the painting to the National Gallery in 1917. Today, display is shared between the National Gallery and the Hugh Lane Gallery.

Lane got a two-for-one deal when he acquired Aurelia.  On the reverse of the canvas – did he know it was there, or was it covered up? – is a second, unfinished, perhaps even more flamboyant portrait of 'the Crow'.  Here, against an empty background Aurelia raises her head, flares her nostrils and gives us a wide, rictus grin as she seems ready to tear open her blouse. She looks like a tragic actress in a mad scene from a play, perhaps starring the great Italian thespian of the day, Eleanora Duse. We do not know why Mancini did not finish this arresting work and turned over the canvas to paint another, very different, image of the same beguiling model.

Style: Post-Impressionist
The dark red curtain in the background gives a warm, luxurious atmosphere to this portrait and complements the sitter’s auburn hair and sparkling brown eyes. The rose -- traditionally a nuptial flower -- tucked over her ear accentuates her beauty and might suggest that this engaging young woman is married.

The painting came from the collection of the prominent Cattaneo family in Genoa and was in 1907 acquired as a companion piece to Van Dyck's Portrait of Giovanni Battista Cattaneo, which is also in the National Gallery's collection. The woman was then assumed to represent the wife of the male sitter. However, pendant portraits of husband and wife in this period were almost invariably painted with the sitters facing each other, so it is highly unlikely that these paintings were conceived as a pair. What is more, Giovanni Battista Cattaneo Della Volta (1574–1649) was never married.

Genealogical research now suggests that the woman in this portrait is a different member of the Cattaneo family from Genoa. She might be Giovanni Battista Cattaneo Della Volta's cousin, Isabella Cattaneo Della Volta Imperiale (about 1600 – after 1647), who had married Francesco Imperiale di Nicolò (d. after 1647) in 1619 and would have been in her mid-twenties at the time her portrait was painted. She is drawing attention to her long gold necklace with her right hand, which might be a play on the family name, as Cattaneo phonetically recalls catena, the Italian word for chain.

The picture is not signed and some parts are in a compromised state of preservation, which makes an attribution more uncertain. But the style and quality of the painting are such that it was Van Dyck himself who painted the portrait during his time in Italy. Recent technical analysis revealed several pentimenti strengthening the attribution, while conservation treatment confirmed the irreversible loss of traces indicating how the black costume was originally decorated with elaborate ornamentation made of gold or silver thread, similar to what can be seen in other Genoese portraits by Van Dyck.

Style: Baroque
Against a deep red background, the Archduke Albert of Austria turns towards us with a direct but gentle gaze. His left hand is on the pommel of his sword but his pose is relaxed and unintimidating. His right arm is turned towards us, showing off the delicate pattern of his sleeve and the lace ruffle at his wrist. The sheen on the satin fabric is the brightest thing in the painting, almost detracting from his face. Albert was part of the Habsburg family, one of the powerful reigning dynasties in Europe at the time, and some of his features are unmistakably Habsburg: long cheeks, an aquiline nose and a high brow. His hair is fashionably short and his beard is close trimmed.

Round his neck is a meticulously gathered ruff trimmed with exquisite lace; on the scarlet covered table beside him is a black velvet hat embellished with black feathers. Almost entangled with the gold buttons and trimming on his open doublet is a gold chain with a gold pendant hanging from it. The tiny jewelled fleece is the emblem of the Order of the Golden Fleece, the highest order of Spanish chivalry. This was awarded to Albert in 1598 as a dowry by his uncle, King Philip II of Spain, the year before he married Isabella, Philip’s favourite daughter. This portrait is a pendant to one of his wife.

Albert was the younger son of the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II and had been educated at the court of his uncle for a career in the Roman Catholic Church. He was appointed archbishop and cardinal of Toledo in Spain but served Philip as a soldier and diplomat as well. He was made Governor of the Netherlands in 1595, after the death of his brother Ernst, the previous governor. This meant that Albert took on the task of subduing the rebellious Protestants in the Northern Provinces; the Southern Provinces (Flanders) were Roman Catholic. Philip insisted that Albert gave up holy orders and, with reluctance, Albert obtained papal dispensation as well as permission to marry Isabella. Despite his reluctance, the marriage was a happy one and he and Isabella held joint sovereignty of the Netherlands until Albert’s death in 1621.

The couple shared an interest in the promotion of the arts, and Rubens was invited to become one of three court painters, with Jan Breughel and Otto van Veen. Rubens was given permission to live in Antwerp rather than at court in Brussels, but even so, he became a part of the close court circle. Albert was particularly fond of Rubens, who named his first-born son after him.

Style: Baroque
As the first glimmers of dawn rise beyond the dark hill on the horizon, Abraham obeys God's command to take his household and leave their home in Haran. The towers and walls of Canaan, where the family is headed, are just visible in the distance. The story comes from the Old Testament Book of Genesis (12:1).

God appears to the elderly Abraham in a burst of light in the overcast sky. Abraham turns to hear God's word, which comes to him as a golden ray. We see Abraham's family and his horned goats, sheep, spaniel, donkeys and a beautifully observed still life of his brass and copper pots and pans. Abraham's nephew, Lot, stands beside him and his wife, Sarah, follows riding on a white horse. A young woman holds a baby up to Sarah, though it cannot be hers: Sarah's only child, Isaac, was born much later. The dawn light suggests the urgency of the household's departure from Haran, the gate of which appears as a stone arch on the right.

Jacopo Bassano first depicted the Departure of Abraham around 1570. The first version of the composition seen here is in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, and bears an inscription saying it is the work of both Jacopo Bassano and his son Francesco. Jacopo Bassano's sons Francesco and Leandro were both painters and often worked jointly with their father or copied his work, so it can be difficult to establish which of them created which painting. Francesco is thought to have made many copies of The Departure of Abraham. Assistants in the Bassano workshop would have painted less important parts of the larger paintings, made copies, and made up the paints. The National Gallery's painting may be by an artist or assistant in Jacopo's workshop or by an imitator of Jacopo's style.

The Bassano family of painters were particularly known for painting biblical scenes including animals and ordinary-looking people with their household goods. Livestock, birds, baskets, brass pans and a similar dog are also included in Jacopo Bassano's The Purification of the Temple.

The Departure of Abraham used to hang with another painting attributed to Jacopo Bassano, The Return of the Prodigal Son, and they may have been painted as a pair, with related subjects and compositions. The Return of the Prodigal Son was sold by the National Gallery in 1857.

Style: High Renaissance