wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
This painting reflects the simple and direct manner of German portraiture of the late fifteenth century. The sturdy sitter confronts the viewer head on, both of his hands clearly visible, his body filling the breadth of the image. His expression is asymmetrical: one side of his face is composed and relaxed while the other is stern and sombre, the eye positioned higher up and the eyebrow frowning slightly. The sense of movement in his expression gives the portrait vibrancy, but his presence is anchored by the strong shadow he casts on the background, which is intended to imitate the effect of pine cut across the grain.

The background was at some point overpainted with a layer of bright blue paint, which technical analysis has revealed to be Prussian blue, a pigment that only became available to artists in the early years of the eighteenth century.  The blue colour was similar to that often used by Hans Holbein the Younger, the renowned sixteenth-century German portraitist, as a background in his portraits (like A Lady with a Squirrel and a Starling, for example). Whoever made this change probably wished to pass the portrait off as a work by Holbein, which would have had more value than a painting by an unknown German artist.

Not only was the painting thought to be by Holbein, but, as we know from the descriptions of engravings made after it in the earlier part of the nineteenth century, it was thought to show the German religious reformer Martin Luther. When the painting was cleaned at the National Gallery, the blue overpaint was removed, revealing the original wood-grain background and the full extent of the hat, which had been reduced in size as part of the deceptive transformation. The sitter is identified by the letter he holds, which is addressed to him: his name is Alexander Mornauer. Mornauer was town clerk of Landshut in Bavaria, a position he inherited in 1464 from his father and which he held until 1488.

The severity of the image is softened by the evocation of texture in the sitter's clothing, such as the soft fur lining of the coat, and in his skin, where a fine network of wrinkles is visible around his clear hazel eyes. Strong catch lights in the pupils and white outlines to the irises brighten his eyes. In many details, including the articulation of the finger joints, the delineation of the fingernails and the treatment of the highlights, the portrait bears close resemblance to one of Sigismund, Archduke of Tyrol (Alte Pinakothek, Munich), which is attributed to the same anonymous painter (who is named after the National Gallery picture).

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
According to Christian tradition, the pagan virgin Veronica witnessed Christ carrying the Cross on the road to Calvary. She took pity on him and wiped his face with her veil, which was miraculously imprinted with his features. Saint Veronica kneels to receive the gauzy veil from Christ’s hand as he continues on his way. Although Christ is in profile, with his lidded eyes looking down and blood trickling from his forehead, the image on the cloth is full face with eyes gazing straight at us.

The Virgin and Mary Magdalene, with tears streaming from their eyes, follow Christ with Saint John the Evangelist. Simon of Cyrene, also in profile, helps to carry Christ’s cross, an episode recounted in Luke 23: 26. This incident is the Fifth Station of the Cross. The stations are halting-places on Christ's journey on the Via Dolorosa to Calvary to be crucified and images of these moments are intended, accompanied by prayers, to help the faithful to contemplate the suffering of Christ.

The sixteenth-century art biographer Vasari writes that this painting was made for the church of San Gallo in Florence, which was destroyed in 1529. He implies that this was one of Ridolfo’s earliest important commissions. The subject of Christ carrying the Cross was unusual for altarpieces at this date in Italy -- the prominence of Veronica and her veil suggests that this altarpiece may have been painted for a chapel dedicated to her.

Vasari also says that in this painting Ridolfo Ghirlandaio included a number of ‘very beautiful heads taken from life and executed with lovingness', including the portrait of his father, the artist Domenico Ghirlandaio, who had died in 1494 aged 45, and several friends and studio assistants. The older man in profile on the far right appears to be a portrait, resembling Domenico Ghirlandaio's 1485 self portrait as a shepherd in his Adoration of the Shepherds in the Sassetta Chapel of the Carmine Church, Florence. Simon of Cyrene and the soldier looking directly at us on the left may also be portraits. (The soldier is anachronistically carrying a gun.) However, the face of the grimacing soldier to the right of Christ has not been studied from life but appears to be based on a drawing by Leonardo. The helmet of the mounted warrior recalls another Leonardo drawing: Profile of a Warrior in a Helmet (British Museum, London). Leonardo's drawings, especially his renderings of extreme emotion and unusual physiognomies, were very influential during this period.

Style: High Renaissance
This panel belongs to a series of four paintings that show the life of Florence's patron saint, Zenobius. He was converted to Christianity by the Bishop of Florence, Theodorus, when he was 18 years old. He broke off his marriage engagement and was baptised. According to Clemente Mazza, who wrote the biography of Saint Zenobius that Botticelli used as his source, Zenobius's parents were initially critical of his decision, but he prayed for them and they too wished to be baptised. Eventually he became Bishop of Florence.

Botticelli has shown all of these episodes in this panel, which reads like a lively comic strip from left to right. The action is set in the streets of Florence and the architecture would have been largely familiar to contemporary viewers. Botticelli has beautified and idealised his home city, however, and the streets appear cleaner and wider than they actually were. Some of the buildings are imagined or at least more elaborate and richly decorated than the real thing.  He has created a sense of depth by showing a view down a side street towards the hills outside the city.

In the first scene on the far left of the panel, Zenobius, wearing a pink robe, appears twice. First he is talking to a group of women and then sadly but resolutely waking away. Middle-aged women in white headdresses surround a young bare-headed woman in a blue dress and green cloak. This young woman, bowing her head sadly, is Zenobius's fiancée, whom he has rejected in favour of a life in the service of God. His dainty feet in soft leather boots mirror each other in both poses, emphasising the about-turn of his decision. He crosses the road and is next seen kneeling, wearing only a loincloth, before a large classical-style urn of water. Saint Theodorus is shown baptising him, surrounded by young men in religious vestments, perhaps ordinands.

The central scene shows Zenobius's mother, Sophia, being baptised in the covered walkway that surrounds an opulent building with carved and gilded columns. In the final scene Zenobius, who is shown kneeling, has matured -- he now has short hair and a beard. Botticelli has omitted a number of scenes from the saint's early life and instead concludes this panel with his ordination as Bishop of Florence by Pope Damasus.

Style: High Renaissance
This portrait of Caterina Giovanna Penza (or Pensa) was probably intended to hang beside a companion picture of her husband, the Venetian architect Tommaso Temanza, in which he holds the instruments of his profession (Gallerie dell' Accademia, Venice). Alessandro was the son of artist Pietro Longhi, whose paintings are also in the National Gallery's collection.

Born in 1721, Caterina married Tommaso in 1739 and was still alive in 1789, when her husband died. This portrait was painted in around 1760, when Caterina was about 40 years old. Her hair is neatly tied back and covered in wig powder to create a silver-grey appearance; her smile is relaxed and welcoming, her cheeks rosy and her features delicate. She wears an elegant dress embellished with a lace collar and gold embroidery, a corsage of different flowers and a string of pearls. Set against a plain background, her blue shawl and the flowers on her dress and in her hair bring the portrait to life.

Style: Neoclassical
Adriaen Brouwer specialised in rowdy scenes of peasant life and this is one of the largest and rowdiest he made. We are in a dingy, sparsely furnished tavern with plaster falling off the walls. A small gathering of drinkers and smokers squat on low wooden stools and chairs. The focus of their attention -- and ours -- is the tussle going on between a man and a woman on the left-hand side of the painting. From the leers and smirks on the faces of the onlookers it is clearly causing a good deal of amusement.

The depiction is unusually lewd. The man, his trousers open at the front, is wedging the woman’s legs apart with his knee and forcing his hand up her skirts. She fights back, trying to push his hand away and pulling at his hair with a determined grip. From the expression on his face, she appears to be having some effect. The sharp cry of pain which distorts his features seems to be what has attracted the attention of his fellow drinkers. It isn’t made explicit whether we are witnessing a prostitute fighting off a drunken client or a sexual assault on a barmaid, or simply watching a lovers’ tiff. Most likely, in this environment, the woman would have been perceived as a prostitute. Alcohol was considered an aphrodisiac (as was tobacco) and the upset flagon on the step in front of the couple, its lid hanging open and ale spilling out, would almost certainly have been interpreted as an obscene reference to female sexuality.

Brouwer’s middle-class clients would have seen such a scene as both a source of amusement and a moral condemnation of drunken or licentious behaviour. Such a tension over whether to react with moral outrage or be entertained by promiscuous behaviour is apparent in many paintings made in Holland and Flanders during the seventeenth century. Brouwer worked in both countries and early biographies of him suggest that he was not unfamiliar with tavern life. Indeed, he painted a lighthearted group portrait of him and his fellow artists drinking and smoking together (The Smokers in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).

Brouwer’s skill was not only his ability to capture the atmosphere of the tavern and suggest the interactions between figures so effectively, but also to depict the contrasting expressions on their faces. This is one of the best examples of his work, which was admired by many of his contemporary artists. Some of the greatest painters of the time collected his work, including Rembrandt and Rubens.

Style: Baroque
This is one of Turner's most ambitious late mythological paintings in which he brought together a range of sources to create his own interpretation of a legend.

The story of Hero and Leander was originally told by Musaeus, a Greek poet of the fourth or fifth century BC. Hero, a priestess of Aphrodite, lived in a tower in Sestos on the Hellespont strait, which separates Europe from Asia. She was in love with Leander, a young man from Abydos on the Asian side. Every night she would hold up a lamp to guide him as he swam through the water to be with her. One night the lamp blew out, and he was drowned. On seeing his dead body, Hero threw herself off her tower to join him in death. Although Turner cited an English translation of Masaeus as his source, he also included seven lines of his own poetry in the Royal Academy catalogue when the painting was exhibited in 1837.

A sketchbook study from 1802 suggests that Turner had planned a picture of Hero and Leander some 35 years before he produced this picture. The story had been painted by many artists during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, most notably by Rubens, but Turner was most likely prompted to create his version when paintings by contemporaries, Henry Howard and William Etty, were exhibited in 1806 and 1827. A further impetus came when Lord Byron’s poem, The Bride of Abydos, was published in 1813. Abydos was Leander’s home, and the poem also included reference to his and Hero’s tragic fate. Turner was a keen admirer of Byron, and had illustrated an edition of his works, so he would have known about the poem. In May 1810 Byron had also famously swum across the Hellespont from Sestos to Abydos, this celebrated feat stimulating a surge of interest in the story of the doomed couple.

The two lovers are not the largest figures in the painting. Turner breaks with the conventions of history painting, which required the principal characters be in or near the centre of the picture, and places them almost hidden in shadow at the water’s edge as Leander prepares to leave. Above them on the terrace, a winged Cupid, who has cast his bow and quiver on the ground, holds up a lamp and a torch. Hymen stands beside him. Around them, Turner constructs an imaginary location from various classical architectural elements, a wide staircase and a large floor mosaic. On the right, an exotic ‘Moorish’ tower, representing Abydos on the Turkish coast, is just visible behind the large, jagged rocks upon which ghostly sea nymphs have gathered.

As Turner’s verse states, the night is ending, as ‘love yet lingers'. Although dawn is just breaking, a crescent moon is still visible in the turbulent blue-black sky. Turner uses the darkness and deep shadows to heighten the drama of the scene and to perhaps hint at the tragedy about to occur, as Leander leaves Hero, never to return.

Style: Realist, Romantic, Georgian, Victorian
Abraham Bloemaert was among the most influential artists of the Dutch Golden Age. Based in Utrecht, he started out as a Mannerist painter but eventually adopted a more classicising style while also coming under the influence of the work of the Dutch Caravaggisti. This work is a spectacular example of this later style. Its strong triangular composition brims with primary colours and beautifully observed still-life details.The painting’s subject is the Old Testament story of Lot and his daughters, popular because of its moralising potential and dramatic possibilities. Spared on account of his virtue, Lot escaped God’s destruction of the immoral city of Sodom with his wife and two daughters. After the loss of his wife, who was turned to salt for disobeying God’s command not to look back at the burning city, Lot’s own daughters seduced him in order to ensure the continuation of the human race. Lot looks hazily to the ground, seemingly unaware of the unsteady drinking cup he holds in his hand. A shadow cast by his wide-brimmed hat falls over his eyes, symbolic of his obliviousness to the intentions of his alert and scheming daughters. Since the medieval period, paintings of this subject served to moralise both the dangers of female seduction and the overconsumption of alcohol.The painting is indebted to the work of Bloemaert’s many pupils, notably that of Gerrit van Honthorst of the 1620s. Its monumental style has resulted in it being attributed to several artists over the years, including Peter Paul Rubens. The discovery of Bloemaert’s signature and the date 1624 during the picture’s restoration in 2004 showed it to be a fine example of a work painted at the height of the painter’s artistic maturity, when he was in his late fifties but keeping up with the latest trends in painting with the gusto of a budding young artist.

Style: Baroque
Cimabue's celebrated 'Madonna' is carried in procession through the streets of Florence; in front of the 'Madonna', and crowned with laurels, walks Cimabue with his pupil Giotto; behind are Arnolfo de Lapo, Gaddo Gaddi, Andrea Tafi, Nicola Pisano, Buffalmacco, Simone Memmi. In the right corner is Dante.This was Leighton's first major work, painted in Rome. It was shown at the Academy in 1855. It was an immediate success, and Queen Victoria bought it for 600 guineas on opening day. She recorded in her diary: 'There was a very big picture by a man called Leighton. It is a beautiful painting, quite reminding one of a Paul Veronese, so bright and full of light. Albert was enchanted with it - so much so that he made me buy it.'The subject is from Vasari's account of how the 'Rucellai Madonna' was carried from the house of the 13th century painter Cimabue to the church of S. Maria Novella in Florence. Vasari also mentions Charles of Anjou, King of Naples, and Leighton has shown him on horseback on the right of the composition.This painting is on loan from His Majesty The King

Style: Neoclassical, Victorian
This puzzling painting seems to be a picture in two halves. At the top the Virgin and Child embrace affectionately in a gilded sunburst which explodes in a blue sky. Below, ignoring them completely, two saints and medley of animals stand in a wooded wilderness. On the left a bearded Saint Anthony Abbot rings his bell and glowers at an elegant knight. This is Saint George, dressed in fifteenth-century armour, and a stylish straw hat, a contemporary French fashion. A dragon -- his emblem -- curls around his legs and snarls at Anthony's boar.

This is the only surviving signed work by Pisanello, and one of only four panel paintings that are certainly by him (he also painted frescoes and made medallions). Another is The Vision of Saint Eustace. Here, very curiously, his signature, 'Pisanus p[inxi]t' ('Pisano painted [this]') is in the form of curling fronds of greenery with small blue flowers at the corners -- right in the middle, at the bottom.

We don't know who this painting was made for, though Pisanello was a court painter and worked for various Italian noble families. It was always a single panel and its small scale suggests it was for private enjoyment. The iconography is unusual and must have had a particular meaning for the original commissioner. In some ways it resembles manuscript illuminations made for French aristocracy: the Virgin and Child shown in a sunburst comes from the medieval Apocalypse, the illustrated Book of Revelations, in which a woman clothed in the sun gives birth to a child to rule all nations. Saints George and Anthony were very widely venerated in northern Italy and they were often shown together, although rarely alone like this. Saint Anthony was a hermit, while Saint George was regarded as a patron of the medieval knightly class. Perhaps they represent two different ways of life, the ascetic -- that is, renouncing worldly riches and pleasure -- and the courtly.

Pisanello was especially famous in his lifetime for his images of animals. No preparatory drawings for this panel survive, but similar boars and dragons are found in drawings attributed to him (now in the Louvre, Paris and the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge). He often reused details from drawings and model books, making it hard to date this panel. The horses' heads are especially close to drawings Pisanello made for frescoes in Saint'Anastasia in Verona around 1434--8. The panel was probably painted shortly after that.

The painting was not in good condition when it was bought in 1862 by Sir Charles Eastlake, the National Gallery's first director, and was extensively restored for him. Very little of the surface of the upper part of the painting is original, but the restoration seems to have been reasonably faithful. In places we can see the underdrawing through the restored layers, as in the faces of the Virgin and Child. An elaborate gilded frame was made for Eastlake and contains copies of medals with portraits of Pisanello and Leonello d'Este, once thought to be a model for Saint George.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance, International Gothic
Like its companion picture, this work shows a view of the Piazza San Marco from just inside the colonnade which ran along three sides of the square. Here, we stand beneath the Procuratie Nuove, which was built between 1580 and 1640 to house the procurators, or caretakers, of San Marco; its ground floor consists of an arcade of 52 stone arches. Although he was painting one of Venice's most famous sights, Canaletto took liberties with the architecture to produce a dramatic composition, enlarging the size of the archway and removing one of the pillars so we can see both the piazza and down the arcade.

We, like the small group of men in front of us, are positioned against the pillar of an archway. The man seated to the left is doing the talking while his companion listens intently -- they may be looking up at something behind us, perhaps the arch itself. A dog sits faithfully at their feet. Another man, wearing a vivid green cloak and holding a cup and saucer daintily, seems to be listening in on their conversation. Behind him is the famous coffee house, Caffè Florian, a well-known centre of social life during Canaletto's time (it remains so today). Along the arcade, people sit on benches outside shops and cafes, looking out across the square; the sunlight streams through the archways and shadows stretch across the floor. Nearby, we can see street vendors with baskets of goods, idle dogs and three men wearing long cloaks.

A drawing showing just the three men and the dog (British Museum, London) is one of very few studies of people by Canaletto that survive. He used pen to describe the contours of the forms, and the cloak of the standing figure in particular -- a detail that can also be seen in this painting. Black outlines shape the breeches worn by the seated figures, while strokes of yellow paint on the sleeves and coats give them a lively texture. Their faces, too, are made up of highlights applied freely to the forehead, cheeks, nose and chin.

Canaletto experimented with a form of visual trickery, arranging the vertical lines of particular architectural features -- the pillar of the arch and the column on its outer edge with the campanile (bell tower) beyond, for example -- to create an unusual and interesting composition. The flag poles in front of the Basilica di San Marco, the city's grandest church, and the turrets on its facade create more vertical lines, while the steeply angled, diagonal lines of the colonnade draw our eye across rather than up. The figures at the base of the campanile and the far end of the arcade, made up of tiny flicks and dots of paint, help to create an impression of the recession of space. As always with Canaletto, the view is entirely convincing.

Style: Rococo, Neoclassical