wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
The sun sinks behind a steep Italian hillside, casting a soft, gold light over a meandering river in the valley below. The distant mountains have become so misty they might be mistaken for clouds. But the chill of evening is perhaps settling in. Huddled in his coat with a blanket wrapped round him, his hat well down over his ears, a man rides his mule side-saddle.

This is a muleteer, someone who travelled the countryside delivering goods for sale. His water bottle is slung beside his animal's head. On either side of the front mule's wooden saddle hang two large barrels that probably carry oil or wine. Each of the thin, patient animals has a decorative feeding bag, so that its nose is constantly dipped into it. The leading mule has a gilt medallion on its forehead. There is a sense of the sun having soaked into the earth and of its effect on man and animals, tired now and moving slower and slower. There's also a sense of the continuity of rural occupations from ancient times, and of tradition, like the ornamentation of the mules.

Behind them -- perhaps going a little faster -- a peasant drives two oxen down the mountain path. His raises his hand as if his attention has been caught by something high up in the woods, a bird or small creature perhaps. The scene is saved from becoming too idyllic by a leafless tree at the side of the path making harsh angular shapes at variance with the soft, fine leaves of the beech trees. The undergrowth is thick. Here, as everywhere in the picture, the leaves are painted with meticulous detail made possible by the use of copper as a support, which allowed a smooth application of paint.

Jan Both came from Utrecht; young painters from here often crossed the Alps for a stay in Italy. He and his brother Andries shared a house in Rome; Andries painted street scenes but Jan went out into the countryside and sketched from nature. Andries died in Venice on the return journey to the Netherlands, but Jan returned to Utrecht. There, he turned his raw material into a series of landscapes suffused by a rich, golden light, which were hugely popular with Dutch collectors. The style was to be adopted by a whole generation of Dutch landscape painters, including Aelbert Cuyp and Nicolaes Berchem.

Occasionally Both would use his Mediterranean landscape as a background to a mythical or biblical story, such as Landscape with the Judgement of Paris, or he painted parts of Rome long since ruined, like in A View on the Tiber. But on the whole, he was happiest with the warm southern light on the warm southern landscape, so much enjoyed by the people of the Dutch Republic used to cooler, flatter scenes.

Style: Baroque
Paintings of Merry Companies (a group of people making music together or otherwise entertaining themselves in a domestic setting) were very popular in Holland in the early 1630s. This is a particularly distinctive example: a shaft of bright sunlight gives the composition a clear structure and brings sharpness and life to the detail depicted -- the crisp white frills of the lace cap worn by the woman on the left, or the pegs in the neck of the violin where the twisted ends of the strings have been painted with a single brush hair.

This sense of clarity is also enhanced by the limited palette. The artist has restricted himself to just two key colours -- luminous yellows and vibrant pinks -- which glow and shimmer against the cool, shadowy greys of the background, the lady’s dark grey bodice and the violinist’s hat. There is order too, to the arrangement of the figures. The central grouping of the three musicians is framed by a pipe-smoking observer on one side and the maid and boy busy laying (or perhaps clearing) the table on the other.

But while the composition has been carefully structured and coloured, the meaning of the painting is much less clear. Is it a straightforward evocation of a happy company enjoying their music-making? Or should we read into it moralising allusions about the perils of alcohol, smoking and sexual temptation -- themes which are apparent in some similar paintings of the time?

Clearly this is a wealthy household which enjoys its food, drink and other pleasures. There is both red and white wine in the cooler on the floor, a fancy meat pie on the table and the shadowy smoker in the foreground is enjoying his pipe so much that he allows two streams of smoke to blow from his nostrils. Even the little dog seems well fed, and distinctly sleepy. But it is hard to detect, for example, erotic tension between the musicians. The violinist is looking intently at the woman conducting with her left hand -- but it's surely a look of concentration, one which suggests musical focus and domestic harmony rather than romantic collusion. But there's no doubt that alcohol and tobacco were then associated with immoral behaviour. Given that the musicians are framed by the pipe smoker and an apparent offer of wine from the small boy who holds up a glass, it is possible that van Velsen may have been hinting at a potential threat to the peace and order which the musicians currently enjoy. If he is, it is a subtle hint in a painting which also celebrates life’s pleasures.

With the exception of one portrait, van Velsen painted only genre scenes like this one. He worked in the style of the early paintings of Anthonie Palamedes, who was slightly older than him and became a master in the painters’ guild at Delft, where they both lived, four years earlier than van Velsen. In fact, this painting was once falsely signed as the work of Palamedes.

Style: Baroque
A group of four cows drink at a pool set in a flat grassy plain. A few trees are dotted on the horizon. The cows form a focal point in the composition, their warm brown and ochre tones creating a contrast with the surrounding landscape. The sky is overcast yet the plain itself is painted in fresh greens. The whole is broadly and swiftly painted, the landscape rendered in long strokes of different greens, often with two separate colours overlaid wet-in-wet.  Diaz used more delicate vertical sweeping strokes of fluid paint to depict the rushes and grasses to the right of the pool.

Painted quickly, this is typical of the kind of sketch Diaz would have dashed off, perhaps for a friend. Although the scene was undoubtedly painted from memory, it is probably based on the flat plains around the village of Barbizon.

Style: Barbizon
The Virgin Mary, dressed in blue, visits her older cousin Elizabeth, who is pregnant with Saint John the Baptist. This episode is described in the New Testament (Luke 1: 36--55), and happens immediately after the angel visits Mary to announce her own miraculous conception of Jesus Christ.

In the Bible, the women rejoice at their pregnancies, but here they look serious and concerned. Saint Joseph, Mary's husband, is not included in biblical descriptions of the Visitation but he often appears in paintings. Here he stands behind Mary. The elderly man descending the steps is Zacharias, Elizabeth's husband.

The artist adopted a classical painting style: the bodies have a large and solid appearance and are based on the study of antique sculpture. The architecture is simple with little detail apart from the door and an archway revealing a glimpse of the sky and landscape beyond.

This painting was at one time attributed to Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, but the use of ultramarine blue pigment in the Virgin's clothing makes it unlikely to have been painted in Spain. It was bought by the National Gallery as a painting by Philippe de Champaigne although this attribution is no longer accepted.

The composition is similar to Palma Vecchio's Visitation painted in the early 1520s (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna). The artist of the painting we see here may have known about Palma's painting or about painted copies of it by David Teniers the Younger. We know that the Palma painting was in Venice until about 1637. Our painting is likely to be by a north Italian artist or a French painter working in Italy. The yellow pigment in Joseph's cloak was first used in Naples and the architecture is Italian in style.

Style: Baroque
In this fantastical setting, the holy family pause on their journey beside a derelict Roman temple. Among crumbling columns and fragmented archways, niches with antique statues and sculpted bas-reliefs remain intact.

The Virgin Mary gives some figs to Christ as a symbol of her virtue and fertility, while Joseph rests against a stone altar or Roman sarcophagus. Placing the scene among these classical ruins symbolises the collapse of ancient Roman paganism and the triumph of Catholicism.

The family have fled to Egypt to escape persecution by Herod, who had ordered the execution of all babies born in Bethlehem. The Flight into Egypt is referred to in the Gospel of Matthew (2: 13--15) although the 'rest' we see here relates to a later, more elaborate Latin version of the story (Evangelium 21--22). Like other painters, Patel ignored many of the details in the later legend. This narrative describes the holy family sheltering from the sun under a palm tree, but the Virgin and Christ here are partially shaded by an oak tree -- although several palm trees are positioned nearby to show that this scene takes place in Egypt. To the right, an undamaged marble statue of a goddess is positioned within a niche, but according to the legend when the family entered the temple at Sotina all the idols fell off the altar.

Patel probably never visited Italy, but here he recreates the countryside around Rome -- the Roman Campagna. The landscape was probably inspired by the work of Patel’s celebrated contemporary, Claude, who spent many years in Rome. The ruins may show the impact of Claude’s Seaport with the Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba and Ulysses restituting Chryseis to Chryses (Louvre, Paris), both of which probably arrived in Paris some years before Patel painted this. As in Claude's work, precise architectural drawing is used to create perspective, and the arrangement of archways and columns lead our eye into the distance.

The composition is painted in a classical style: the landscape is ordered and balanced with trees and ruined buildings framing the scene. The mountains and buildings in the background are shown as blue, reflecting the way that atmospheric effects alter the way we perceive colours in a distant landscape -- a phenomenon known as aerial perspective.

Style: Baroque, Academic
Christ stands naked in the middle of the river Jordan; the water reaches his waist and we can see faint ripples against his legs. John the Baptist, wearing a red robe over his camel-skin tunic, pours a bowl of water over Christ's head, baptising him. Two wingless angels stand on the bank; one has a white robe -- it probably belongs to Christ -- slung over his shoulders.

Christ's baptism is considered the beginning of his ministry and the moment that his work and teachings received divine authority. This painting comes from a series of panels that tell the story of the life of John the Baptist, which once formed a predella.

John preached that he was sent by God to baptise -- here we see God the Father in the sky above Christ, surrounded by angels. The orange wings that frame him belong to seraphim, divine creatures who guard his throne. Beneath God, descending towards Christ in golden rays, is a dove, the symbol of the Holy Ghost. The scene reflects John's testimony of what happened when he baptised Christ: 'I saw the Spirit descend as a dove from heaven, and it remained on him. And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God.' (John 1: 32--4).

Scenes of John the Baptist were more common in Florence, where he was patron saint, than in Siena, where Giovanni di Paolo came from. The symmetrical design of this panel shows that the artist was inspired by the works of the Florentine sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti, who had made a scene of Christ's baptism to decorate the doors of the Florence Baptistery. In it, Christ stands in the middle of the river framed by figures on the banks on either side. Giovanni di Paolo almost certainly visited Florence in the 1430s, where he would have seen the doors.

The arrangement and poses of the figures closely resemble another sculpted bronze panel by Ghiberti, made for the baptismal font of Siena Cathedral, which Giovanni di Paolo would certainly have known.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance, International Gothic
The luxuriant flowers in van Walscapelle's painting seem to loom out of the darkness. A single shaft of light makes them glow as if they exist in a magical world of their own. A distorted reflection in the glass bowl -- a glimpse through a window of clouds chasing across the sky -- emphasises the other-worldliness of the picture.

Earlier Dutch flower paintings are spectacular too, but stiff and formal. Van Walscapelle's painting seems alive and moving -- nature is busy. The flowers seem to nod as if a breeze has passed through, leaving leaves trailing, the petals of the striped tulip ready to drop, and a caterpillar dangling like an acrobat falling from a trapeze.

More insects dance about among the blooms. A ladybird settles for a moment on the purple peony. The white rose is alive with long-legged beetles, industrious ants, a tiny spider and a blue-bellied fly, its forelegs daintily folded. Another caterpillar, spines at the alert, explores the route from white rose to red, where limpid drops of water trickle from petal to petal. A tawny butterfly raises its wings ready to launch itself into the air. The snail, shell gleaming in a warm patch of sun, balances perilously near the edge of the stone shelf -- perhaps suddenly aware of the black beetle that appears to give chase, close behind.

At first glance, the romance of the painting -- the movement, the minute detail, the rich colours of the flowers, the sinuous lines that run through the picture -- is what engages the eye. It takes a moment to realize that the flowers couldn't possibly have been in bloom at the same time. This becomes obvious -- and odd -- in the juxtaposition of the summer strawberries at one end of the shelf and the luscious, ripe, autumn blackberries at the other. But van Walscapelle isn't just painting a scientific study -- he's painting a celebration of nature.

He paints fresh, spring violas, the tulip already fading to make room for summer lilies, roses and carnations. The ripe ears of wheat, their leaves and long stems already faded and brittle, straggle through the picture. They represent autumn, the end of the cycle. It's as if we are moving through the seasons in the same dark room.

Van Walscapelle was never as successful as some of his contemporaries. He made a living from painting for a while but never reached high prices. The placing of the three roses in this picture is a little clumsy perhaps -- they seem a little squashed together, with the distances between other flowers unclear. But these shortcomings are nothing compared to the skill and artistry with which he painted details -- the glowing snail-shell, the reflection of the window, the delicacy of the insects, and, perhaps above all, the wet stems seen through the glass and  water of the vase.

But van Walscapelle gave up painting to take a job in a municipal office in Amsterdam, leaving the ants and the spiders to go about their business and us wondering what might have been, had he continued to paint his unique vision of natural things.

Style: Baroque
This is a landscape full of sunshine, energy and life. The strong sweeping curve of the track dominates the middle of the picture. Two greyhounds bound along, racing each other, while another dog lags behind, defecating on the verge. A horseman and his companion chat easily as they go, and in the distance we glimpse what seems to be a pedlar with his pack ambling along behind them.

The woodland to the right is in full summer leaf and the tree canopies seem to billow upwards, like the cumulus clouds which bloom in the luminous sky. Beyond all this, a pleasing view opens out -- a cluster of houses, the outline of a church and the neat lines of an orchard in front of it and, in the far distance, a line of blue-grey hills swells along the horizon.

All seems right with the world -- or, it would do if it weren’t for one thing. Right up front, filling more than a third of the canvas, are the dramatic outlines of two blasted trees. The nearer one is thrust towards us, its limbs fallen, a few dead branches like sharp fracture lines across the sky. It is so close we can see that moss and lichen are spreading over the remaining bark. Most of the rest has peeled away, exposing the livid pinks and fading greys of the dead wood beneath. Some of the branches have fallen to the ground below and lie next to a thistle which has gone to seed, its drooping leaves beginning to turn.

Wijnants frequently used this motif of a dead or dying tree in the foreground of his landscapes (see A Landscape with a Dead Tree, and a Peasant driving Oxen and Sheep along a Road, for example). It works as a visual device, acting as a frame for the composition and helping to create a greater sense of depth to the landscape. But as this work features not one but two dead trees, positioned so prominently, it is hard not to detect a note of melancholy -- a sense that Wijnants wanted to inject a reminder of mortality into this otherwise idyllic country view.

The view is not only idyllic, but also probably idealised. Most Dutch landscape paintings of the seventeenth century were not attempts at an accurate depiction of a particular place, but aimed to create a pleasing prospect reminiscent of a familiar stretch of countryside. Here, it is the hinterland around the town of Haarlem, where Wijnants lived and worked; it formed the backdrop for most of his paintings. The hills we can see in the distance are not the foothills of a distant mountain range, but ancient sand dunes which have, over many centuries, been overgrown with scrub and woodland (it is quite possible that he exaggerated their height for greater dramatic effect).

Style: Baroque
Light spills in through a window high up on the towering wall of the barn. It picks out a sturdy woman with her sleeves rolled up, her arms in a tub -- she's perhaps washing clothes. Around her, discarded articles -- an earthenware jar, a wicker basket, some colourful rags -- are heaped up among bales of straw. The window does little to illuminate the rest of the vast space, leaving another figure almost lost in the shadows, crouching over a tiny fire in the background.

This is an early work of Isack van Ostade, painted while he was still working alongside his older brother and teacher, Adriaen, who also painted scenes of peasant life. Isack later produced atmospheric and intricately detailed winter scenes, but he died young, before he could fulfil his potential. Isack's A Winter Scene is also in the National Gallery's collection.

Style: Baroque
This is a copy of Titian's large composition known as 'La Gloria' (The Glory) but referred to by Titian himself as The Trinity. He developed it for a painting commissioned by the Emperor Charles V when the artist was in Augsburg (in Germany) in 1551. Delivered in 1554, Charles took it with him to his retirement residence at Yuste in Extremadura. After his death, it was brought to the monastery of the Escorial along with the Emperor's remains. It has been in the Prado, Madrid, since 1837.

The Emperor and Empress with their son Prince Philip (the future King Philip II of Spain) and his sisters kneel wearing only shrouds before God the Father and Christ. The dove of the Holy Ghost appears in the heavens between them in a blaze of light. The Virgin Mary glides up through the clouds wrapped in a cloak of ultramarine like the robes of God and Christ enthroned above. The blue of their robes matches that of the open sky in the centre of the painting and the white shrouds of the Imperial family echo the clouds. The large figures in the foreground include Noah holding up the ark, Moses with the tablets of the Law, the Prophet Ezekiel with an eagle and King David clutching his harp. Behind the Virgin Mary is John the Baptist, and the Imperial family are accompanied by an escort of angels and a crowd of other mortals including Adam and Eve and the bearded, elderly Titian himself, centrally placed near the right edge.

The painting was made as an epitaph, a kind of picture or relief sculpture common in Germany, in which the patron and his family appear at prayer before the Trinity or another image central to the Christian faith. It functioned like the visual equivalent of a tombstone in memory of a person who has died. The Imperial family, already wearing their burial shrouds, appeal to God and Christ for the Salvation of their souls. When the painting was acquired by the National Gallery in 1926 it was believed to be an original oil sketch by Titian for 'La Gloria'. The evident changes to the surface were cited as evidence that Titian had tried out and perfected the composition for 'La Gloria' in this sketch before painting the full-sized canvas for Charles V. It is evident from closer examination, however, that it is a later copy, made not after the painting in Spain but the somewhat different engraving of the subject by Cornelis Cort, which Titian produced in 1565. X-ray images reveal the composition of the engraving under the surface changes, which were surely made by another artist with reference to the painting. This artist also corrected the painting for colour, bringing it in line with the painting in places where the first copyist, working from the black-and-white print, had applied colours different to those on Titian's canvas. The copy may have been made intentionally to be sold as a Titian oil sketch and its provenance invented to gain a sale.

Style: High Renaissance