wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
The naked Christ Child stands on a marble ledge, his toes poking forwards over its edge. He looks up adoringly at his mother, the Virgin Mary, and tenderly grasps her thumb with one hand.

The Virgin herself, a rather cool blonde with pale grey, unfocused eyes and a long nose, stands in a strangely claustrophobic classical space. She is framed by an arch, which rises from two columns standing on the parapet. Behind her is a curved stone wall; two haloed heads, presumably of angels, peer over it. Although not crowned -- her hair is covered with a short veil, apparently pinned above her right ear -- she is magnificently dressed: her blue cloak is trimmed with a broad band set with pearls and interlined with green. It falls in folds onto the shelf in front of her.

The artist, Giovanni Francesco da Rimini, has inscribed his name in Latin and the date, 1461, on the front of the marble parapet. He worked in Padua among other places, and was clearly heavily influenced by the painter Squarcione who ran a painting school there. The naked child on the ledge, the peculiar pop-eyed appearances and the fair, frosty Virgin all appear in Squarcione's single surviving painting (now in the Staatliche Museen, Berlin). Like his contemporary Giorgio Schiavone, da Rimini was clearly fascinated by classical forms, perhaps without fully understanding them.

The idea of showing the Virgin in an architectural frame has echoes of contemporary paintings showing her at a window, like The Virgin and Child by Dirk Bouts. These have connotations of how medieval kings and queens would have shown themselves to the public.

Style: Early Renaissance
This picture has the format of a portrait, showing only head and shoulders against a dark background, but the man's intense and almost agonised expression suggests that it is not one. He strains upwards, looking at something beyond the picture; his eyes glisten with tears.

It is, in fact, a copy of the head of Saint Peter from El Greco's Tears of Saint Peter, of which several versions exist; the best is in the Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle. That picture shows the saint in a landscape, with Mary Magdalene visible in the background, walking away from Christ's empty tomb after the Resurrection. Its focus is on Saint Peter's grief for having denied knowing Christ in order to protect himself after the latter's arrest. After his third denial 'the Lord turned and looked upon Peter', who 'went out and wept bitterly' (Luke 22: 61--62).

The subject was not common before El Greco's time, but there was much demand for it during the Counter-Reformation period and the artist made it his own. The existence of numerous versions suggests that there was both demand and admiration for the way in which El Greco showed Saint Peter's sorrow and repentance.

The scene emphasises the saint's humanity through his sin and remorse, but the message is that with repentance comes forgiveness. As with many of El Greco's paintings, the image of Saint Peter had meaning for the Catholic Church's Counter-Reformation movement. The Catholic sacrament of Penance, which included confession, was under threat from Protestant reformers. Images like this offered reassurance of its validity and effectiveness, as well as promoting the papacy through the example of Saint Peter, the first Bishop of Rome -- or pope.

Style: Baroque
Saint John the Baptist, dressed in a hair shirt and a purple mantle, holds his attribute of a lamb. According to the Gospels, the saint lived as a hermit in the desert, wearing clothes of camel hair and eating locusts and honey, and was the first to recognise Christ as the Messiah. When he baptised Christ in the river Jordan he proclaimed, 'Behold the Lamb of God' (John 1: 36), which explains his gesturing with his right hand to the lamb in his left.

This refined painting was originally the left wing of a small triptych by Hans Memling, the central panel of which showed the Virgin and Child, and the right-hand wing Saint Lawrence. Memling frequently recycled ideas and he reused many of his workshop patterns in this triptych. Similar Baptists appear on the left wing of The Virgin and Child with Saints and Donors (The Donne Triptych), in the centre panel of the Triptych of the Two Saints John (Memling Museum, Bruges) of 1479 and in the Small Triptych of Saint John the Baptist (Kunsthistoriches Museum, Vienna). The lamb's head is so similar to that of the animal in Saint John the Baptist (Alte Pinakothek, Münich) that both may depend on the same drawing.

On the reverse of the panel four cranes stand in a dark landscape lit by the sun, which is probably rising. One at the front holds a stone in his upraised claw.  According to legend, at night flocks of cranes would post a single bird as sentry. To prevent itself falling asleep, this bird would hold a stone in its foot: if it dropped the stone it would wake up immediately. Because of this legend, cranes in medieval art became a symbol of vigilance. The fox on the upper right side may represent the dangers from which the sentinel crane is protecting the others. The vigilant crane was the emblem of the bishop and astrologer Benedetto Pagagnotti, the first owner of the triptych, whose coat of arms hangs on a tree behind.

Technical analysis of the painting shows underdrawing for the figure, the lamb and the landscape, quite freely executed.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
In this rare survival -- a Renaissance painting done on linen canvas -- the Israelites, having escaped slavery in Egypt, are led through the wilderness by Moses. The fleeing families, encumbered by bundles, dogs and even a monkey, make their way down a winding road through a rocky landscape.

Moses stands on the right holding a staff; the man behind him with a white beard must be his brother Aaron. On his other side, a man is beating a drum, and another drummer is mounted on the camel on the left. In the centre, a group of young women dance in a circle. According to the Book of Exodus (15: 20--21), Miriam, Moses' sister, took a timbrel and, together with with other Israelite women, danced to celebrate their freedom. Miriam must be the woman facing us in the centre, the most richly attired of the dancers.

This is one of a group of eight similar paintings executed by various artists, two of which are in the National Gallery's collection (The Israelites gathering Manna shows a later episode from the Book of Exodus). They were probably made for a small chapel or oratory in Ferrara, possibly for the newly built chapel in the apartment of Duke Alfonso I d'Este in the Via Coperta. Some of the artists who worked on this series -- Pisano, Garofalo and Michelotto (Michele Coltellini) -- were among a team employed painting on canvas for the duchess, Lucrezia Borgia, in 1506 and were still working at the castle at the beginning of 1509. Alternatively, the paintings might have been in the home of a member of Ferrara's Jewish community.

The canvas itself is a fine plain weave linen; the light colour seen in areas of paint loss suggests it might have been bleached. There is no  ground or priming layer, but the linen has been sized with glue. Infrared reflectography suggests that both this and The Israelites gathering Manna are fully underdrawn with simple outlines in a liquid medium. These were closely followed during painting, so it's not always possible to be sure that the lines seen in the infrared images are underdrawing. But in some places, such as the right shoulder of Aaron, traces of the drawn outlines are visible to the naked eye.

Style: High Renaissance
This unfinished oil sketch on canvas is by Paul Huet, a leading figure of French nineteenth-century landscape painting. While a student at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in the 1820s, he often visited the park at Saint-Cloud, one of his favourite locations. Situated in the west of Paris, it had expansive views across the river Seine and the city. The park was a royal domain on the site of Château de Saint-Cloud, the residence of several royal and imperial families from the sixteenth century until its destruction in 1870 during the Franco-Prussian war. Huet continued to visit the park throughout his life, and this sketch probably dates from the 1850s. It contains cadmium yellow or orange, not widely available until at least the 1840s.

A pioneer of Romantic landscape painting, Huet was especially interested in capturing the changing moods evoked by landscape through the atmospheric effects of light and shade. He sometimes worked en plein air (outdoors) – as is very likely the case with this painting, whose bright freshness contrasts with the darker mood of many of his larger, more finished works. Although abandoned, this sketch demonstrates his method of painting. Applying lighter paint over darker areas of shadow, Huet builds up structure with vertical bands of yellow-greens and darker greens to suggest the towering trees that almost fill the canvas. The use of green-black paint, particularly between the trees and behind their trunks, adds depth to the scene. Between the tree trunks, we catch a glimpse of a fountain. A variety of brushstrokes recreate the different textures of dense foliage. Quick, twisting dabs of the brush produce a translucent feathery effect -- for example, in the branches overhanging against the sky. This is enhanced by traces of the brush’s bristles in the paint. Elsewhere, including the left side of the incomplete tree on the right, the paint is laid on more thickly, in short strokes, to create a denser surface. Huet conceded that he did not  always find it easy to paint in front of nature, and we can only speculate as to why he abandoned this painting.

While at the École des Beaux-Arts, Huet was enrolled in the studio of the history painter, Baron Gros, from 1819 to 1822. There he met another student, the young English artist Richard Parkes Bonington, and the two frequently painted together in Normandy. Huet was deeply influenced not only by Bonington's habit of painting outdoors and his use of watercolour (a medium which he adopted), but also by landscapes exhibited by British artists, including Constable, at the Paris Salons of 1824 and 1827. In 1822 Huet met the young Eugène Delacroix and the two became lifelong friends. He is credited with painting part of the landscape in Delacroix’s Portrait of Louis-Auguste Schwiter (1826), which is also in the National Gallery’s collection.

Style: Barbizon
This panel formed the centre of an altarpiece commissioned by a member of the Quaratesi family for the high altar of San Niccoló Oltrarno, Florence. It was flanked by Saints Mary Magdalene, Nicholas of Bari, John the Baptist and George; the predella showed scenes from the Life of Saint Nicholas.

The Child holds what seems to be a daisy. The cloth of honour behind the Virgin is silver (now tarnished) glazed with red. The highly decorative nature of the variously patterned luxury textiles, the elaborately tooled gold, and the delicate nature of the figures contrast strongly with the same subject painted by Masaccio a year later. The gable with God the Father is original but within a modern frame.

This painting is on loan from His Majesty The King

Style: Early Renaissance, Gothic, International Gothic
This was one of the largest and most expensive altarpieces made in fourteenth-century Florence, for the Benedictine convent church of San Pier Maggiore, one Florence's most important and oldest churches.

The central panel shows the coronation of the Virgin by Christ, which occurred, according to legend, after her body and soul were taken up into heaven. The scene is framed by panels on the left and right which show rows of saints looking on. Above this main tier was another level of pictures, showing scenes from Christ’s life and after his death: the Nativity and Adoration of the Kings, the Resurrection and events after it, Christ's ascension to heavenand Pentecost. Three pinnacles topped the whole construction, the central one showing the Trinity flanked on the left and right by panels showing adoring angels. The predella depicted scenes from the life of the church’s patron saint, Peter, and there were probably also two supporting pilasters on either side of the entire construction, decorated with images of saints.

An important and wealthy Florentine family, the Albizzi, commissioned the altarpiece; it is likely that various members contributed towards the cost of its production. Many of the saints depicted in the altarpiece relate to the Albizzi family while others have significance for the church.

San Pier Maggiore was founded by one of Florence’s patron saints, its first bishop, Saint Zenobius, in the fifth century, and became a Benedictine convent in the eleventh century.  At the end of the fourteenth century it was rebuilt, with work completed at around the same time that this altarpiece was installed over the high altar of the choir. The altarpiece played an important part in the ecclesiastical life of the city: new bishops of Florence would process to the church on the way back from their ordination at the cathedral, and it served as the backdrop to a ceremony in which the bishop would become symbolically married to the church. The ritual was sealed when the bishop offered a ring to the convent’s abbess. This recognition and privilege were apt given that the church’s founder was the city's first bishop.



The painting has been attributed to Jacopo di Cione on the basis of its style. Infrared reflectography has revealed that at least two artists were involved in the initial drawings for the painting -- such a large scale painting was likely to be a collaborative project. Surviving documents refer to a 'designer': 'Niccolaio'. His identity is unknown but he could be Niccolò di Pietro di Gerini who collaborated with Jacopo di Cione on other projects, or Niccolò di Tommaso. Considering how much he was paid for the work this designer might have provided a compositional drawing as well as have designed the construction of the woodwork. The documents also mention a decorative painted curtain made to cover the painting.



The majority of the panels which made up the main section of the altarpiece are in the National Gallery, while paintings from the predella and pilasters have been identified in other collections.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
These two small paintings which show different episodes from the Passion probably once formed the wings of a portable altarpiece. In Christ at Gethsemane, Christ kneels in prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, just before he is arrested (Matthew 26: 39--42). The other panel, on long-term loan to the National Gallery, shows Christ carrying the cross on the way to the Crucifixion, described in all four Gospels and widely depicted throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance (from The Way to Calvary by Ugolino di Nerio to Bassano's Way to Calvary).

The sweet, light style of these pictures links them to Pietro Perugino, who in the early sixteenth century was the most admired and commercial artist in central Italy. They were painted by Lo Spagna, an artist of Spanish origin who, after Raphael, was the most talented of Perugino’s associates. Lo Spagna – who spent most of his career in Southern Umbria - developed a sweet, charming yet idiosyncratic manner which distinguishes his paintings from the plethora of works produced in Perugino’s style. The kneeling figure of Christ in the Agony is very close to that in Lo Spagna's The Agony in the Garden, itself derived from Perugino's Agony in the Garden (Uffizi, Florence). Christ carrying the Cross has a general resemblance to the figure of Christ in Raphael's The Procession to Calvary, painted for the Church of S. Antonio, Perugia, in about 1504--5, though it is clearly not a copy of it.

Christ Carrying the Cross and Christ at Gethsemane were made as part of the same ensemble. They were probably the wings of a small portable altarpiece, with a scene of the crucifixion (now lost) at the centre. Both pictures are described in the nineteenth century as having come from the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi in Florence. One source states that they were executed for the private chapel of Cardinal Giovanni di Lorenzo de’ Medici (1475–1521), afterwards Pope Leo X, in Florence.

Style: High Renaissance
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo is best known for his large ceiling paintings and wall decorations for palaces and monasteries across Europe, from his native Venice to Germany and Spain. Painted at a time when Tiepolo’s fame was growing across Italy, these four narrow canvases are from a room, the Sala degli Specchi (Room of Mirrors), on the second floor of the Palazzo Cornaro (or Corner) on the Campo San Polo, Venice.

The interior of the sixteenth-century Palazzo Cornaro was extensively redecorated between 1736 and 1747 in preparation for a marriage. We know this from payments for work recorded in the 1740s. The room had an allegorical ceiling painting at its centre (now in the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra) and the walls were decorated with woodwork and mirrors. Four canvases with female allegorical figures, painted in monochrome to look like bas-relief sculpture, hung above the doors (these are now thought to be the paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam).

The four long rectangular paintings (‘Quattro pezzi di quadro bislunghi’) from the room are likely the four narrow, upright paintings now in the National Gallery Rinaldo turning in Shame from the Magic Shield, Seated Man, Woman with Jar and Boy, Two Standing Figures and Two Men seated under a Tree. An eighteenth-century inventory indicated that the paintings were inspired by Torquato Tasso’s popular sixteenth-century poem Jerusalem Delivered. Set during the First Crusade (1096–9), a Christian military campaign to recapture Jerusalem from Islamic rule, the poem tells of the ill-fated love between the Saracen sorceress Armida and Rinaldo, a Christian knight.

The elaborate costumes and headgear worn by the figures reflect eighteenth-century interest in non-European cultures. The pale pastel tones and Tiepolo's lively brushwork in these paintings would have helped create a dazzling atmosphere. The stories told in Tasso’s poem were especially popular in eighteenth-century Europe, where they often became the subject of operas, plays and concerts as well as art.

Style: Baroque, Rococo
The S. Gerolamo Altarpiece is an important work of the Florentine painter Francesco Botticini, an exact contemporary of Sandro Botticelli. It is thought that Botticini trained in the workshops of some of the leading artists in Renaissance Florence, including that of Andrea del Verrocchio, before establishing himself as a sought-after supplier of devotional paintings and altarpieces. The altarpiece -- which was acquired by Sir Charles Eastlake, first Director of the National Gallery, during his first visit to Italy in 1855 -- was among the very first early Italian paintings to arrive at the National Gallery. It once stood on an altar in the church of S. Gerolamo in Fiesole, hence its name.

Saint Jerome (Gerolamo or Girolamo in Italian) is prominently depicted in the separately framed image at the centre of the altarpiece. A celebrated fourth-century theologian, Jerome is best known for his translation of the Bible from the original Hebrew and Greek into Latin. During the fifteenth century a cult dedicated to the saint found many followers, leading to the establishment of numerous religious houses across the Italian Peninsula. The church of S. Gerolamo in Fiesole was the regional centre of these so-called Hieronymites, and was under the patronage of the Medici, who also owned an important villa nearby.

The two figures kneeling on either side of the image of Saint Jerome are not members of the Medici family, however. On the left is the Florentine patrician Girolamo di Piero di Cardinale Rucellai, whose circular marble tomb, not unlike the one depicted in front of him here, can still be seen in the church. His young son kneels opposite. Their coats of arms appear on either end of the predella panel below, as well as on a sacrament tabernacle from the same church (now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London). It is not coincidental that Girolamo was devoted to the saint with whom he shared his name. He may even have chosen the church out of reverence for his name saint, whose life as a hermit and profound learning seems to have inspired him.

Thanks to the inscriptions at the base of the framed image of Saint Jerome, we can identify the four saints surrounding him: Saints Damasus and Eusebius appear on the left, with Saints Paula and Eustochium on the right. All four were contemporaries of Saint Jerome and corresponded with him. The angels hovering above them in the sky play musical instruments, the sound of which the worshipper is encouraged to imagine.

The predella shows four scenes from Jerome's life: the saint removing a thorn from a lion's paw; his vision while ill; his death; and his appearance with Saint John the Baptist to Saint Augustine.

Style: Early Renaissance
Paintings like Venice: The Doge's Palace and the Molo from the Basin of San Marco and its pendant Venice: The Punta della Dogana with S. Maria della Salute by Guardi fulfilled a taste for poetic views of Venice among locals and foreign collectors on the Grand Tour around Europe. His customers could own a snapshot of their favourite area of Venice, or be reminded of the city's impressive architecture and bustling atmosphere.

Guardi, along with Canaletto and Bernardo Bellotto, show Venice as a prosperous city, although by the second half of the eighteenth century the Venetian Republic's control of the Mediterranean sea trade was growing weaker. Venice held a strategic position on the edge of the Adriatic, the sea between Italy's eastern coast and Dalmatia (modern-day Croatia). For centuries, its maritime power had been unrivalled, its economic growth achieved by receiving goods -- sugar cane, spices, textiles and jewellery -- from the east by sea and selling them in the growing European market. Venice created an empire with ports, colonies and trading posts ranging from the Black Sea to Egypt.

By the 1770s, when these paintings were probably made, Guardi continued to paint similar parts of the city but had moved far away from Canaletto’s influence in terms of technique -- from the highly finished appearance of the latter's work to a more free-handed approach. Both views can be seen in Canaletto's picture of The Basin of San Marco on Ascension Day, but Guardi depicted scenes of everyday life rather than ceremonial occasions.

Guardi was the last of the great Venetian view painters. His influence on nineteenth-century artists is particularly noticeable in the work of Turner, who visited Venice on three occasions during his career. He seems to have enjoyed painting the same locations as the ones we see here but from different viewpoints, for example, his view of Venice - Maria della Salute and Venice Quay, Ducal Palace (Tate Britain, London), both exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1844.

Style: Neoclassical