wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
This is a copy of Raphael's Virgin and Child known as 'The Bridgewater Madonna'. The original is on loan to the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh from the Duke of Sutherland's collection. Raphael continued to be hugely influential long after his death aged 37 in 1520. Copies and prints of his works helped to spread his fame before the advent of photography.

The copy is similar in size and in most colours -- it also follows Raphael's style closely, which makes it difficult to attribute to a known artist. Its origin is uncertain but it possibly dates from the late sixteenth century. Although much importance was given to the creative process of artistic invention, copying other works and reusing successful models was common practice in the Renaissance workshop. The copy is very precise, except for the gauzy drapery which covers Christ's nudity. This is clearly a later addition, probably dating from the nineteenth century.

The Bridgewater Madonna represents Raphael's most complex approach to the subject of the Virgin and Child before his move to Rome in 1508. Although he had previously depicted Christ lying across his mother's lap, he had never before given the pose so much movement nor invested the scene with so much drama. Raphael adapted Christ's pose in reverse from Michelangelo's relief sculpture, the Taddei Tondo (Royal Academy of Arts, London). The dynamic spiralling composition echoes, also in reverse, Leonardo's Madonna of the Yardwinder (one of two versions is on loan to the Scottish National Galleries). Raphael adopted a twisting pose and poignant gaze characteristic of Leonardo in his Saint Catherine of Alexandria, which also dates from about 1507.

Preparatory drawings in London and Vienna show the complex process by which Raphael combined and transformed these two influences from Leonardo and Michelangelo. Technical examination of The Bridgewater Madonna shows that he continued to revise his ideas during painting. X-ray images reveal that the Virgin and Child were originally shown in a landscape setting, as in Leonardo's Yardwinder Madonna. Raphael then painted this out but retained a window with a landscape view in the right background. Only later was this opening transformed into the empty niche of the finished picture. There is still a window seat remaining beneath the niche. The light brown shape to the right of the niche was probably an internal shutter for this window, and has been retained as a door to cover the niche. Its colour serves to balance the wooden bench on which the Virgin is sitting, in the diagonally opposite corner of the composition.

Raphael's decision to paint out the landscape may have been to focus our attention more closely on the interaction of the Virgin and Child. He also changed his mind about the Virgin's costume. He first painted her with a blue cloak wrapping around her right breast and behind the child's body. When he decided to remove this piece of drapery, he repainted the whole of the Virgin's dress, which was originally red not pink -- however, he forgot to paint over her left cuff.

Style: High Renaissance
The Virgin Mary -- the figure in blue -- has gone to visit her cousin Elizabeth, who in spite of her age had miraculously become pregnant. The picture illustrates the meeting as described in the Gospel of Luke, though some details are inventions. The Bible describes how Mary went from Nazareth to Juda, where Elizabeth lived. In the distance is a city on a river -- presumably Nazareth, although the actual town is not close to a river -- and on the right is a hilltop fortress, intended to be Juda.

Elizabeth, dressed in red and with a rosary at her belt, has clearly hurried out to meet Mary. She goes down on one knee before her, a mark of respect for the mother of God. Elizabeth's child was John the Baptist, who in adulthood recognised Christ as the Messiah and baptised him in the River Jordan (as in The Baptism of Christ by Piero della Francesca). John leapt for joy in the womb when he heard the Virgin's voice (Luke 1: 41--5). Some of the figures in the background also come from the Bible. The old man leaning on a stick by the arch is presumably Elizabeth's husband, Zacharias, who was a priest in the temple at Juda. When the Archangel Gabriel told him of his wife’s pregnancy, he doubted the news and, as a punishment, was left unable to speak.

The rolling hills topped with small towns, the medieval cities and the green wooded landscape bear little resemblance to first-century Palestine -- or to the surroundings of Antwerp, where Goossen ran his workshop.  For medieval Christians, the events of the Bible took place outside normal time and space, but were understood as 'here and now' rather than 'then and there'. Other details show how life went on unaware while miracles took place: the riders on the hill in the distance, a dog chasing the birds, and a woman dragging a reluctant child across the square on the right.

Like most Renaissance painters, Goossen did not invent scenes; he borrowed and adapted compositions and motifs from other artists. This picture is related to three paintings of the same subject from the 1440s. One is by Jacques Daret (now in the Staatliche Museen, Berlin) and two are associated with Rogier van der Weyden (now in the Museum der Bildende Künste, Leipzig and Galleria Sabauda, Turin) -- Rogier was Goossen's grandfather, and Goossen inherited his materials. Even some small details, like the idea for a man and dog outside an arch, are taken from Rogier, but Goossen has completely changed how they look.

This panel was probably once part of a huge altarpiece painted in the Netherlands for export to Spain or Portugal. Another panel from the same altarpiece, The Flight into Egypt, is also in our collection.

Style: High Renaissance
Jan van de Cappelle’s sea is flat calm and luminous -- even the few boats that appear to be moving hardly disturb the still reflections. Flags droop or raise a faint flutter, and sails seem to reach up in vain for a breeze. But there’s a sense of drama in the picture, unusual for the artist. Grey clouds threaten and a fitful sun breaks through, making a single white furled sail gleam. The barge in the foreground on the right is rowed with some urgency, and a forest of sails and masts crowd together in the middle distance. A puff of smoke from a cannon reminds us that in seventeenth-century Holland ships were for war as well as trade.

In these images, a single cannon firing a shot is usually a salute on board a naval vessel. In this case, the smoke comes from the yacht with its sails unfurled in a graceful curve. Perhaps it acknowledges the departure of the man seated at the back of the barge heading away from the larger vessel. This is a Statenjacht (state yacht), an official vessel used for carrying members of the States General or members of the parliaments of the provincial states. The coat of arms on the stern isn’t readable and since uniforms weren’t worn in the navy at that time, we can’t be sure if it's an admiralty craft or not. But the man in the barge has splendid feathers in his hat and shiny buttons aplenty on his chest, suggesting he has some rank and his visit has been of importance.

In the foreground on the left is a pont, a long, flat-bottomed craft used to ferry foot passengers. The ones here watch activities on the yacht or chat among themselves, while the two horses on board appear fascinated by their own reflections in the water. The sail of the pont is almost furled, but there's enough to pick up a little breeze and the passengers are seemingly content to travel along very slowly. The Dutch colours are wrapped around its pole in the stern, perhaps to keep it from trailing in the water, as the enormous flag on the barge does.

Van de Cappelle was often inaccurate in his depictions of the many vessels he painted, seeing his pictures as harmonious compositions rather than an accurate record, unlike the leading Dutch marine artist Willem van de Velde the Younger. But like all marine artists at the time van de Cappelle painted indoors, using both his sketches and his imagination to craft his marine views. Here, he has lengthened the masts of the boats -- they appear even more elegant and stately than they would in reality. The clouds are dark and brooding, contrasting with rather than being reflected in the shimmering water below. He has successfully put the drama and mood of the composition first, leaving total realism to others.

Style: Baroque
A young woman with brown, plaited hair and plucked eyebrows gazes modestly downward. Her hairstyle is Italianate: her plaits are wound around the top of her head and are entwined with a semi-transparent scarf that falls across her right shoulder. A reddish gem in a gold setting is fixed into the plaits above the parting. She wears a semi-transparent ruched chemise and a blue overdress trimmed with brown fur. A green textile hangs behind her, the pale yellow patterns probably intended to represent threads of gold. It has a yellow fringe, behind which is a purple hanging with a yellow pattern.

She is possibly the Virgin Mary: she very closely resembles the Virgin in the Adoration of the Kings (Gemäldegalerie, Berlin), also attributed to Master of the Female Half-Lengths, and in The Rest on the Flight into Egypt. The hangings behind the young woman are like the draperies in the Berlin Adoration. Our panel has been cut down on all four sides, and may be a fragment of a much larger Nativity or Adoration.

In style and technique this picture seems to agree very well with the figures in the Rest on the Flight mentioned above. Very large numbers of paintings are attributed to the Master, not all by the same artist, but many of them may have been produced in the same large workshop. This picture was probably by the Master himself, who had some rather idiosyncratic painting techniques. Here, for example he ingeniously blotted the paint layers in order to depict the semi-transparent fabric of the veil. In the flesh and the chemise he used stiff brushes, or perhaps even toothed tools, to apply the paint more thinly and smoothly.

Style: High Renaissance
Jan van de Velde was an Amsterdam artist who specialised in still-life painting. His compositions were simple, like this arrangement of glass, oysters and lemons. The knife handle protruding from the table was designed to demonstrate his skill in showing perspective.

A seventeenth-century Dutch still life was intended as a decorative picture for the home, but also as a celebration of the exotic items that were available in the newly prosperous country. The oysters came fresh from the seas around Holland but lemons were a Mediterranean fruit, by this time grown in local hothouses that were expensive to run. The green glass roemer (the heavy wine goblet with buttons of glass on the stem) was also a costly item.

Style: Baroque
The Roman goddess Diana threatened death to any man who saw her bathing. Actaeon, who came across her in a forest pool by accident, was turned into a stag and torn to pieces by Diana's hounds.

In this painting, the figure beside Diana looks more like a satyr, so it’s impossible to be certain which story the artist intended to portray. It’s not even certain that the nude figure lit up as if in a spotlight is Diana, though the presence of the hounds and the towel beside her suggests that’s who she is meant to be.

Although it was once believed to have been painted by Rembrandt, the picture is now thought to be by a one of his followers. It has darkened with age, obscuring the background and adding to the difficulty of a certain identification of either the story or the artist who painted it.

Style: Baroque
Weier, who trained in Holland, specialised in battle scenes. This one is typical of the pictures he made in imitation of the Dutch painter Philips Wouwerman. Compare it for example with Wouwerman's frenetic battle scene, Cavalry making a Sortie from a Fort on a Hill, which is also in the National Gallery's collection.

A group of soldiers on horseback have been penned in by infantry, who aim their weapons at the encircled group. The light is concentrated on the  grey horse in the foreground that rears up in panic. Its rider, with his elaborately plumed hat, must be the commander of the besieged forces.

Weier's signature and the date 1645 are faintly visible beneath the sword of the man kneeling in the right foreground. This is one of two pictures of this date, which are the earliest evidence of Weier's career as an artist.

Style: Baroque
Haarlem's Grote Kerk is filled with people, though they are dwarfed by the architecture of the church, a vast space with a brass chandelier dangling in the centre. The painting's orientation emphasises the pulpit, where the preacher would stand to read the sermon, an essential part of the liturgy in the Dutch Reformed Church. With a few exceptions, like the boy petting his dog, the congregation seems to listen attentively to the preacher, who lifts his finger in what is either a moralising gesture or a pointing acknowledgement of God above. The gesture is repeated by the man on the left side of the foreground, who seems to be telling off two young children. The one on the left is leaning on what has been identified as an alms chest, intended for collections for the local orphanage. The children are probably orphans, and the sign above the chest includes carved figures of an orphan girl and boy.

Close inspection of the painting reveals other small but meaningful details. In the choir high above the congregation is an organ, its shutter open. The right shutter door features a depiction of the Resurrection, and the painted Christ seems to be making the same gesture as the preacher and the man telling off the orphans, creating a visual parallel across the composition. There is another richly decorated organ on the right wall of the aisle, and one of the panels surrounding the preacher’s pulpit is inscribed with Psalm 138. Berckheyde has signed his painting on the stone paving in the foreground, along with the year 1673.

There is another painting by Gerrit Berckheyde in the National Gallery's collection that depicts the exterior of the same church. The building was one of Berckheyde's favourite subjects, though interior views by his hand are much rarer than exterior ones. This might have had something to do with his brother Job, who was more experienced in the interior genre. Another prolific painter of churches and church interiors, Pieter Saenredam, also painted the same interior some decades before.

A similar view of Haarlem’s most important church during a sermon was engraved by Jan van de Velde, after a drawing by Saenredam. This was made for a 1628 book that celebrated the city, which may have been the source that originally inspired Berckheyde’s painting.

Style: Baroque
The Virgin Mary sits on a bank in a hilly landscape, holding the naked infant Christ on her knee. He looks at us and raises his right hand in blessing. With the other he holds his mother’s thumb. The edges of the Virgin’s robes and the haloes are painted in shell gold. The three sets of three gold lines radiating from Christ’s head denote that he, with God and the Holy Ghost, is one of the Trinity.

This small picture, intended for private devotion, was formerly believed to be by the Florentine painter Albertinelli (1474--1515). It is now thought to be by Sogliani, a minor painter working in Florence and Pisa. Mentioned in Vasari’s Lives of the Artists, Sogliani was influenced by Albertinelli and also by Fra Bartolommeo and Andrea del Sarto, who were the leading Florentine artists of the previous generation.

Style: High Renaissance
The sitter wears the red cross of the military order of S. Stefano, founded in Pisa in 1561 by the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosimo I de' Medici. He stands in a very grand room that appears to be his library, beside a large table supported by a carved winged figure holding a swag of flowers. The atmosphere of learning suggests that the winged figure is a 'genius' rather than a cherub. The lower walls of the room are panelled in wood and behind the sitter’s head there appears to be a niche containing a monochrome sculpture group of a woman and child. We only see the lower part of the sculpture, which may relate to the sitter’s identity. Several books of various sizes are propped up on the ledge and against the niche.

The man stands looking directly at us in a confident pose, with one hand on his hip, the other resting on a book. He is brightly lit from the front, resulting in a clear, sharply defined image. The picture’s low viewpoint means that the man looks down at us, emphasising his authority -- he was clearly an important member of the order. His voluminous black cloak dominates the composition, its elaborate damask lining only becoming apparent when you look closely. The letters, pen and Mannerist inkstand on the table, and the books and statue above, allude to his status and learned interests. A very similar bronze inkstand is in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Such an object, as well as being functional, would also have been regarded as a work of art in its own right.

Although Moretto and Moroni were painting full-length portraits of the nobility in Brescia at this time, independent life-size and full-length portraits are less common in Tuscan sixteenth-century art. The painting was once thought to be by Alessandro Allori (1535--1607), successor to Bronzino as painter to the Medici court in Florence. Allori painted countless portraits of such upper-class Tuscans, and the elaborately carved table in this picture is typical of his works. However the painting is closer in style to the work of Girolamo Macchietti, a Florentine artist who also painted The Charity of Saint Nicholas of Bari.

Style: High Renaissance
On the night before his crucifixion, Christ went to the Garden of Gethsemane at the foot of the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem -- a place that he visited frequently. He asked his disciples Peter, John and James to keep watch while he prayed, but they fell asleep. In his prayers Christ asked God, if possible, to spare him the destiny that awaited him. This time of Christ's doubt is known as the Agony in the Garden. Eventually Christ accepted that God's will must be done, and an angel came from heaven to strengthen and comfort him.

Garofalo depicts Christ at prayer while Judas, who has betrayed him, brings the Roman soldiers to arrest him. They arrive with flaming torches at the gate; the buildings of Jerusalem are visible in the distance. An angel appears in a burst of light in the night sky carrying a Crucifix spouting blood into a chalice -- this represents the spilling of Christ's blood, which will turn into the wine of the Eucharist. The angel also illustrates Christ's prayer: 'Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless, not my will, but thine, be done' (Luke 22: 42).

The three apostles sleep on the bank of a brook called the Cedron, the waters of which have been dammed with short sticks. This is a detail used in other paintings by Garofalo, such as The Virgin and Child enthroned with Saint Dominic and Saint Catherine of Siena, where the sticks are just visible at the bottom of the panel. The older apostle is presumably Peter, the younger one must be John. The third apostle, James, is difficult to see, as only the back of his head is depicted leaning against John's green cloak, to the far right of the painting. As dawn breaks and Judas opens the gate for the soldiers, Christ prays for the third and final time: 'The hour is at hand, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners' (Matthew 26: 45). Christ touches his heart and gathers his cloak ready to get up and confront his destiny.

There is another painting of this subject by Garofalo dated 1524 now in the Museum and Art Gallery Birmingham. The National Gallery's Agony in the Garden was painted at around the same time or possibly slightly later. Garofalo also painted the same subject in 1525--6 as an altarpiece for the Benedictine Church of S. Silvestro in Ferrara (now in the Pinacoteca Nazionale, Ferrara); it is likely that the National Gallery's painting was a rehearsal for that commission, to test out some ideas in the vertical format. The painting was transferred from wooden panel to canvas before it entered the National Gallery's collection.

Garofalo's painting technique here is very close to that of Dosso Dossi, his chief artistic rival in Ferrara. The touches of light punctuating the grass and foliage, and the painting of dawn and torchlight are all reminiscent of Dosso's approach. In details such as the soldiers with flaming torches on the right, the highlights were applied with a flickering touch, which is very close to Dosso's technique. Later in Garofalo's career his style diverged from that of Dosso.

Style: High Renaissance
This picture is either a copy of a mid-seventeenth-century Dutch painting, which is now lost, or an imitation or pastiche. As the paint contains a pigment that was not available to artists until the 1840s, it was most likely painted in the second half of the nineteenth century.

The picture has previously been linked to several seventeenth-century Dutch artists, most notably Govert Flinck, a pupil of Rembrandt, as there is some very superficial resemblance to his paintings of the late 1640s. The clothes can also be dated to that period. However, any connection to Flinck is extremely tenuous.

Group portraits were popular in Dutch painting, with Rembrandt’s Night Watch of 1642 (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) being the most famous example. The group here consists of helmeted soldiers and finely dressed cavaliers, who may be officers. A standard bearing the arms of Amsterdam can be seen behind one of the men in black who stands centre left.

Style: Baroque