wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
Paul Jean Clays’ heavy working boats are motionless, their sails hanging like sculptured banners glowing in the sun. But their power is palpable, three great vessels ready to surge forward with the first breath of wind. Although the vessels are stately and we see the detail of rigging, the painting seems to be more about reflected light -- the gleaming reflections that spread, shimmering, across the still water to the edge of the picture, almost under our feet.

The three central boats appear to be koffs, shallow-bottomed craft commonly in use in the nineteenth century on the coasts of Belgium and Germany. As they could sail close inshore, they were ideal for transporting goods and people. A small barge carrying passengers is coming in to the leading boat. Two others are moored nearby, one of them with the sail being raised.

The smaller boat on the left with the stubby mast and brown sail is a hay barge, a small vessel that would not venture far out into the North Sea.  It carries the Dutch ensign; because of the lack of breeze to fill them out, it’s the only identifiable flag in the painting. But we can make out the tall chimneys of a distant factory in Flushing (in the Southwest Netherlands), its smoke spiralling upwards to join the quiet clouds above.

Taught in Paris by Horace Vernet and afterwards by Théodore Gudin, Clays broke free of the Romantic tradition of marine paintings depicting storms, naval battles and tragedies at sea. He seems to have reverted to the practices of seventeenth-century Dutch masters like Willem van de Velde, for whom the accuracy and detail of each vessel was paramount, and Jan van de Cappelle, who focused on the serene atmosphere of a calm sea. A Dutch Yacht saluting by van de Velde and A Coast Scene by van de Cappelle are also in the National Gallery's collection.

Clays was extremely successful in his day but is nowadays less well known, though his paintings are to be seen particularly in regional American galleries. Perhaps wealthy Americans came over and bought these attractive and atmospheric pictures to remind them of their time in Europe.

Style: Realist
Grey clouds threaten the sailing boats in this picture. They gather from away to the left, moving swiftly in contrast to the seemingly motionless vessels below. An angry sun picks up the white sails and -- in the far distance -- the sails of a windmill, making them glow. There are reflections in the water, but a stiff breeze is already stirring, ruffling them and smudging them a murky grey brown.

One boat -- a flat-bottomed transport vessel suitable for inshore sailing -- lowers its sails ready for the storm. The green panel on one side is a leeboard, which would be lowered into the water to keep the boat from drifting with the wind. The brown-sailed vessel further away carries a Dutch ensign at the stern; beyond it, barely visible in the deepening murk, is a mast with a French flag on top, showing that these small craft were capable of travelling some distance but hugging the shore. Sturdy, workmanlike and seemingly indomitable, the height of their masts and the elegance of their sails give the little vessels a poetic grace that no gathering clouds can diminish.

Clays was one of the most distinguished Belgian marine painters of his generation. Early in his career he abandoned the violent dramas of towering seas and shipwrecks favoured by the generation of marine artists working immediately before him. He instead chose calm waters and translucent light, very much in the manner of seventeenth-century Dutch marine painters like Jan van de Cappelle (whose River Scene with Vessels Becalmed is also in the National Gallery's collection). Clays' rich, clean colours, inherited perhaps from the Flemish painting tradition, also contrasted with earlier artists' preference for smoky, rusty tones.

Apart from the title, there is little to establish that the scene in the painting is the coast off the Dutch port of Dordrecht. There were windmills everywhere in Europe, especially in Holland, and though the white tower next to the one here could be Dordrecht’s famous church, it's not a certainty. Clays has packed the shore with boats and more boats, hiding any other landmarks. But a note in French on fading brown paper is pasted on the stretcher at the back of the picture. It translates as: ‘I wish to declare that I have painted this picture for Mr John Parsons (at London). It represents a calm before the storm around Dordrecht, (Holland).' It is signed P.J. Clays, Brussels, 1870; Parsons bequeathed the picture to the National Gallery the same year.

Style: Realist
A woman turns towards us, her raised right hand covered by her silver-grey satin shawl against which she may have been weeping. We can just see the crimson pleats of her full skirt. Behind her is a ruin with six tall arched recesses with foliage sprouting from the walls. This area, particularly the green of the trees and weeds, seems to have darkened and was probably originally easier to see. Beside her an alabaster vase rests on a ledge in front of a niche. Beyond the wall, dawn is breaking over the Venetian lagoon -- a church, bell towers and domes are silhouetted against the horizon. The vase suggests that the figure is Mary Magdalene the penitent prostitute in her traditional red dress, who used a jar of perfumed oil to anoint Christ's feet.

The stunning effects of dawn light on the woman's shimmering satin shawl and her intimate glance towards us are what make this painting so atmospheric and captivating. Paolo Pino in his Dialogo della Pittura (Dialogue on Painting) of 1548 said Savoldo made ‘truer pictures of reality than those made by Flemish masters’. Fifteenth-century Flemish painters were particularly known for their powers of meticulous observation and ability to create images of extreme realism.

Often subtleties have been lost in the faces Savoldo painted because he daringly placed them in shadow, and the paint has changed over time. Due to the paint's increased transparency here the underdrawing now shows through with broad black lines outlining the eyelids and the bags under the woman's eyes as well as her lips and chin. Her hair may have originally been more visible in the shadow of her shawl.

The painting may represent Mary Magdalene visiting Christ's tomb unaccompanied, as described in the Gospel of John: 'The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre...' However, it might be a highly original dramatic 'close-up' of her meeting with the resurrected Christ, which followed her discovery of the empty tomb (John 20: 14--16). Here Mary appears to be illuminated as well as enlightened by the person to whom she turns. It is also possible that this is a portrait of a penitent Venetian courtesan in the guise of Mary Magdalene.

There are three other known versions of the painting, all slightly different. The Berlin version, which does not include the vase, is the most famous and the only one to be inscribed with Savoldo's name. The two other painted versions are in the Palazzo Pitti, Florence (Contini-Bonacossi Collection) and the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. In all three, the woman has a yellow shawl unlike in the National Gallery version. The London and Contini-Bonacossi pictures are the closest in design and detail and were probably the last in the series, as they are more dramatic by being set at dawn and gain impact through their close-cropped compositions.

The painting was once owned by the grandson of Giovan Paolo Averoldi who commissioned a painting of Saint Jerome from Salvoldo (possibly the Saint Jerome now in the National Gallery's collection).

Style: High Renaissance
This half-length figure of a praying saint comes from the upper tier of a paintings:group82|large [[glossary:polyptychs|polyptych (multi-panelled altarpiece) which Crivelli painted in 1476]] for the high altar of the church of San Domenico, in Ascoli Piceno in the Italian Marche. This is Saint Francis, founder of the Franciscan Order. Eyes uplifted and lips parted in passionate prayer, he gazes up in agonised adoration: he would originally have been looking at the Lamentation over the Dead Christ once in the centre of the upper tier. The marks of the stigmata -- the wounds of the Crucifixion which miraculously appeared on Francis's body -- are visible on his hands and through the tear in the side of his habit. Crivelli has combined an emotional expression of fervent devotion with a degree of realism unusual in Italian fifteenth-century painting: the sinews stand out on Francis's hands, veins pulsate in his throat and forehead and we can make out every hair in his eyebrows.

The Dominicans and Franciscans were friars who took religious vows but were not confined to a monastery -- they lived in towns and cities.  Founded in the thirteenth century to provide educated preachers and teachers for a growing urban population, both flourished in the Italian Marche. Men who joined these orders took vows of poverty and travelled from place to place, preaching and living on what was given by their listeners -- although this did not prevent the Orders commissioning costly works of art.

Crivelli has shown Francis here in the ash-grey habit of the especially strict Observant (reformed) Franciscans. The three knots on the belt symbolise the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience all Franciscans took. Saint Francis's prominence on a Dominican altarpiece perhaps reflects a special sympathy for them on the part of the Observant Dominicans of Ascoli. The austere grey of his habit with its crisp, deep folds forms a striking contrast to the glittering damask patterns tooled into the gilded background. Crivelli was skilled at exploiting the optical effects of the different gold surfaces, which would have flickered and shone in the candlelight of a medieval church, making the smooth gold and pastiglia decoration of Francis's halo act as a spotlight on his head.

Crivelli painted  many works for Franciscans of the Marche, including the painting which once hung over the tomb of the Blessed Gabriele Ferretti, and is now in our collection.

Style: Early Renaissance
A young child leans on a cushion holding an apple. It is not clear if it is a girl or a boy. The longish hair, delicate rosy cheeks and full, red lips suggest it might be a girl and the white cloth around the shoulders resembles a fichu -- the shawl worn by little girls. However, fichus were usually made of lighter, transparent material while this one is opaque. A closely similar but apparently more finished version of this painting by Greuze in the Detroit Institute of Arts is titled A Boy with an Apple. These paintings are not portraits of a specific child but genre paintings, representing a general type.

The child is positioned in the extreme foreground of the picture before a dark blank background, the closeness to us creating a sense of immediacy. The colours of the cushion complement the child’s blue and white clothing. Greuze built up the white cloth around the child’s shoulders with vibrant brushstrokes, leaving visible his modelling of the folds. He made changes directly on the canvas while painting -- for example, above the child's left shoulder. Brushstrokes can also be seen in the child’s face where the paint layer is quite thin. The intense gaze of the glistening blue eyes and slightly parted lips -- which Greuze has painted with great care -- give the child an air of thoughtful melancholy, as well as slight unease. The painting was once also called 'Enfant boudeur', meaning 'Sulking Child'. It is sketchier and has a less polished quality than other works by Greuze, such as A Girl. However, it is probably finished but just painted quickly. Such single heads were quite profitable as they didn't take Greuze long to complete.

A drawing by Greuze of 1777 in a private collection represents a slightly older boy with similar chin shape, wavy hair, wide eyes, full lips and troubled look, who also seems to appear in the Wallace Collection’s painting Head of a Boy of about 1782. He may be the same model as in our painting, but represented a few years later. The child’s eyes in the Wallace Collection picture are brown, whereas they are blue in our one. This might be because Greuze was using a type that he repeated again and again, to which he made slight alterations to ensure variety in his work.

The partly ripe apple probably once appeared greener, and may have been included to suggest the child’s young age and innocence. We are not entirely sure why it now appears blue, but it is likely that a yellow lake pigment originally mixed with the blue has faded. Children shown with apples must have been a popular theme as Greuze painted lots of pictures of them, including his Child with an Apple of about 1779 (The National Trust, Upton House). Such images of children may reflect a growing interest in and a changing perception of childhood in France at this time, with a number of children in more privileged households being raised by their own mothers rather than servants, and an increasing emphasis on early education. The mixed blessings of more maternal involvement in the raising of children are depicted in An Interior Scene.

Style: Rococo, Neoclassical
The story of Aeneas is based on Virgil's epic poem Aeneid although this scene comes from Ovid's Metamorphoses (VI: 335 and XIII: 630). Aeneas, prince of Troy, dressed here in an orange cloak, has left his native city and arrived with his father, son Ascanius, and companions on the island of Delos, home of the sun god Apollo. Anius, the King of Delos, dressed in white, gestures to an olive and palm in the centre of the painting, two trees sacred to Apollo. His mother, Latona, clung to these trees while giving birth to Apollo and his sister Diana (Metamorphoses, VI: 335--6). At the top of the classical building to the right is an image of Apollo and Diana killing the giant Tityas, who tried to attack their mother.

The domed temple of Apollo in the background is based on the Pantheon in Rome, the city Aeneas later founds and where he settles with his family. The three golden eagles on the entrance of the temple may allude to Apollo's father, Jupiter, and the Roman Empire, which adopted the bird as its emblem. Claude combines the real with the imaginary. Grand buildings with entrances supported by columns stand in front of round towers and ruins -- architecture he saw in and around Rome. Many of Claude's noble patrons chose to trace their ancestry to ancient Rome, linking themselves to the grandeur of classical antiquity and to Virgil's heroic characters. According to an inscription on a drawing of this composition by Claude -- part of the Liber Veritatis, a collection of the artist’s drawings after his paintings -- this scene was painted for 'Monsieur Dupassy', an unknown Frenchman.

This episode was rarely painted during the seventeenth century but it appealed to Claude, who painted it as the first of six scenes from the story of Aeneas in the last ten years of his life. There are aspects of this composition that often appeared in Claude's paintings either as small details or as the main subject: the shepherd and his goats in the centre and a seaport in the distance with boats arriving or departing. Claude's skill as a painter of landscapes can be seen in the way he uses trees and buildings to suggest scale and perspective, and a subtlety of colouring -- the blue mountains merge with the sea and hazy, softly-lit sky.

Style: Baroque, Academic
This panel was once framed with a scene showing the Nativity and the annunciation to and the adoration of the shepherds.  Both belong to a series of six paintings showing events from the life of Christ, from his death to the Resurrection. This sequence formed the middle tier of a large multi-panelled altarpiece made for the Florentine convent church of San Pier Maggiore. The central scene showed the coronation of the Virgin.

While the adjacent scene of the Nativity is calm and contemplative, this one is busy and lively. The Three Kings kneel before the Christ Child, who is presented to them by the Virgin Mary. The bearded king takes one of Christ's tiny feet in his hand to kiss it; his crown lies on the floor, removed in deference to the baby.  He has offered the child a lidded jar containing his gift. According to the Bible, the kings brought gold and precious spices (frankincense and myrrh). Christ blesses the king while Joseph takes the gift.

Together the kings form part of a harmonious trio of red, blue and green. Kneeling at different heights so that they are all visible, they are followed by an entourage of attendants that winds its way around the craggy rock. There are animals, too: two horses -- one neighing vigorously, his head rearing upwards -- provide transport for the royal train. A pair of camels, also harnessed, look agitated in the crowd and a weasel or a stoat creeps away from the hubbub of the scene in the lower foreground.

The kings, sometimes known as the wise men or 'magi', were important to religious life in Florence. This was because the Epiphany, the feast at which they were celebrated (6 January), was shared with the Feast of the Baptism of Christ, and Saint John the Baptist was one of the city's patron saints (he appears on the panel to the right of the altarpiece's central scene). Every year there was a procession through the city to mark the Epiphany.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
After being exiled from Rome, the Roman general Coriolanus led the Volscian army to besiege the city. He was eventually persuaded to call off the attack by his mother, his wife and their children. In this painting, Coriolanus is shown kneeling before his family, his helmet on the ground beside him. One of his soldiers holds his horse, while the others await his commands. Behind them on the left is Rome, on the banks of the river Tiber.

Although once attributed to Vittore Carpaccio, this picture has all the hallmarks of the style of Michele da Verona: the wide, distant landscape; the mountains blocking out the sky; and the ball-shaped trees in neat rows. His slightly wooden figures are lit with a hard, sharp light; their faces have an almost marble-like smoothness.

Many of these elements can be seen in his vast Crucifixion, painted in 1501 for the monk's refectory at San Giorgio in Braida, Verona (Brera, Milan), but the landscape here has lost some of the freshness of that picture. The composition is a reworking of his Adoration of the Magi of about 1510 (private collection), with its figures of horses and soldiers in a line in front of a wide landscape.

The painting seems to have still been in Verona in the early nineteenth century.

Style: Early Renaissance
The game of golf was played in the Middle Ages, but became particularly popular in seventeenth-century Holland. It was called kolf, and was played on the ice. European winters in the mid-seventeenth century were severe. Rivers and canals froze so solid that the life normally lived in a village moved out onto the frozen waterways and carried on -- business as usual.

But van der Neer shows his villagers at play. One man, about to strike the ball with his long club, is brightly lit in spite of the grey clouds.  A patch of blue overhead reflects on the ice, making it appear even colder. Perhaps a little chilly in his fashionable clothes, the man stands out in his white shirt sleeves and his kolfer's stance -- leaning forward, bottom out. His concentration is fierce as he aims for the target, under the scrutiny of his opponent and a couple of onlookers.

Other couples play along the far bank, leaving the broad stretch of the river to the crazily tipping skaters, the sledge with the old woman bundled up in her shawl, the fisherman checking his lines, the woman sitting on the beleaguered boat, rubbing her leg. Not everyone was an expert skater, it would seem.

Van der Neer painted the little village with affectionate detail. Outlines are crisp with a dusting of snow: a tall grey roof, another brown with moss and sagging just a little, and in front of it a barn with thatch slung over a long pole. Each brittle branch of the leafless trees is silhouetted against mounting white clouds in the background, their slender trunks reflected in the ice. Icicles cling to the side of the bridge and a streak of white light shines out from the back of the barn. A couple cosily wrapped in their smart, warm coats, hand tucked into muffs, stroll along with their dog, who stops and stares at the strange antics of the people on the ice.

Starting as a landscape painter, van der Neer came to winter scenes quite late in his career, but captured the chill coming from the ice and the nuances in colour brought about by the scattering of snow and the warmer tones of the clouds. His small figures -- people who would have been familiar -- are detailed and full of character, drawn first and then transferred into paint in the studio. He treated the old buildings with equal care and fondness, again taken from sketches made outside -- the rickety house in front of the church and the cottage jammed in between them, its chimney smoking. But the landscape itself is imaginary, an amalgamation of all these sketches and drawings brought to life in paint.

Sadly, van der Neer's painting failed to keep him solvent. He kept an inn and painted in his spare time, but even that wasn't enough to make him a livelihood and he died bankrupt.

Style: Baroque
This is the second of two panels from a cassone (a large chest made for a domestic setting). Cassoni were often associated with marriages, and were often decorated with relevant stories from classical literature, history and poetry. These two panels depict one of the founding stories of ancient Rome. When the Romans couldn't find wives, their leader Romulus came up with a devious plan: he invited the neighbouring Sabines to attend some celebratory games so that, at a given signal, the Romans could abduct the young Sabine women.

The first panel, The Rape of the Sabines (before the signal), shows the young Sabine women happily watching a joust. In this painting, Romulus, who appears on a green dais in the centre, has given the signal by standing up and drawing his cloak around him. The young men in his entourage have cast off their cloaks, which sit in two piles beside Romulus, and are dragging away their guests. Other men, presumably more Romans, seem to be rushing to join the action; one climbs a ladder to get up to the stands. In the foreground, a knight in armour on a white horse watches the scene, while his mounted squire hands his helmet to an assistant. Another rider, his sword drawn, charges away to the left, perhaps in pursuit of the fleeing Sabines, who were said to have run away when the trap was sprung.

In spite of its unpromising start, the story ended peaceably: the Sabine women accepted their new husbands and persuaded their families to do so also. They were held up as examples of feminine peacemaking and appropriate role models for Renaissance wives.

Style: Early Renaissance
André-Hercule de Fleury (1653-1743) was tutor to the young King Louis XV. He was made a cardinal in 1726 and became in effect Prime Minister of France. The original version of this work is thought to be a painting at Versailles. Many copies of the portrait were made in Rigaud's studio. Other copies were made later.

Style: Baroque, Rococo