wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
The infant cradling a dove to his cheek closely resembles Cupid in two versions of Titian's Venus and Adonis, dating to around 1560, in Washington and New York. Yet the way in which the picture is painted and the range of colours used are characteristic of work by Titian and his studio of the 1520s.

This apparent contradiction led scholars in the past to believe that the painting was a seventeenth-century pastiche, but recent evidence has led to a re-evaluation of the picture. An X-radiograph not only shows that the boy once had wings, which have been painted over, but also, more surprisingly, that there is a totally different composition beneath the paint layers. This earlier picture relates to the woodcut Landscape with a Milkmaid, designed by Titian and generally attributed to Niccolò Boldrini, executed around 1523. The landscape painting beneath the infant is of closely similar format and includes the same elements but its figures are of different scale to the ones in the woodcut composition. It may have been an attempt to convert the woodcut into a painting, or perhaps a painted trial for the woodcut. Technical evidence suggests that the lower painting was fully dry before Boy with a Bird was painted on top of it. However, there is no trace of varnish or dirt on the surface of the painting underneath to indicate that it was considered finished or that much time elapsed between both paintings being made.

The design of Boy with a Bird seems to relate to a lost Venus and Adonis of the 1520s by Titian, once owned by the Earl of Arundel and copied as a miniature by Peter Oliver (now in Burghley House, Stamford). After it left the Earl of Arundel's collection, the Venus and Adonis entered the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. It was destroyed in 1945 but is recorded in a photograph, which does not show Cupid. A description of the painting prior to its destruction explains that 'in this picture, Cupid with the dove is now missing because a piece of the canvas has been cut away and substituted by a new piece of canvas, which has been painted'.

However, the presence of the earlier landscape composition beneath the paint layers confirms that Boy with a Bird is not a fragment from a larger composition but was always intended as a self-sufficient picture of that size. The alterations made to it during painting are not the adjustments of a copyist but more typical of the way an artist would have tried to resolve uncertainties when creating a new design. The development of the picture also seems too complicated for a later pastiche.

Boy with a Bird is a slight, hastily painted work on a reused canvas, either by the master or more likely by a member of his workshop, giving independent life to a motif extracted from the innovative Venus and Adonis. It is confidently and rapidly executed, and the evidence of change to the wings during painting may mean that the picture is by Titian himself, perhaps intended as a gift.

Style: High Renaissance
Saint John the Evangelist is seated on the island of Patmos -- shrunk to a tiny size -- writing the Book of Revelation. He seems to have reached the twelfth of his 22 chapters, given the appearance in heaven of the 'woman clothed with the sun', and the red dragon with seven heads. They are floating in the sky at the top right.

Saint John holds a quill pen, while the eagle that is his emblem grasps his inkwell and pen-case, tied together with red strings, in its beak. On the right, a small monster crouching on the shore of the island waves a stick at the eagle: in the Renaissance, pictures of the saint on Patmos often included a devil trying to disturb his writing. In the background men are fishing from boats; others stand talking on the shore of a mountainous landscape.

The artist may have known Saint John on Patmos by Hans Memling, the right wing of his triptych of Two Saint Johns (Memling Museum, Bruges). He was certainly following the same tradition. The figure of the saint is a free, reversed version of Memling's saint, and the woman and dragon are much as Memling had imagined them. The tiny island, and the pen-case and inkwell held by the eagle are reminiscent of manuscript illumination.

The landscape, which is in the style of Joachim Patinir, is close to that in The Rest on the Flight into Egypt, also by the Master of the Female Half-Lengths. Both this painting and The Rest on the Flight into Egypt may have been produced in about 1540.

Style: High Renaissance
The Virgin supports the Christ Child on a cushion that rests on a stone ledge. He returns her affectionate gaze, pointing to his breast. His gesture might be intended to emphasise the importance of his body -- the physical incarnation of God -- which would be sacrificed on the Cross to save humankind.

The Virgin's thick mantle, turned over at the edge to reveal its rich yellow lining, dominates the picture; its stiff fabric forms a rectangular opening around the Virgin's face. This striking feature is a good example of Vivarini's shift in the 1480s towards using stronger shapes in his paintings, formed by bold contrasts of light and shade -- a testament to the influence of the work of  Antonello da Messina, who was present in Venice from 1475. This approach to fabric recalls the Virgin and Child possibly by Antonello, also in the National Gallery's collection.

The care taken to represent depth and volume also reflects Vivarini's talent at creating fictive three-dimensional architectural settings for his large-scale altarpieces. This work is similar in style to Vivarini's Virgin and Child Enthroned in the church of San Andrea, Barletta, which he signed and dated in 1483. Vivarini has signed this picture on a cartellino, which is unfurled on the right side of the ledge.

The three main elements of the setting show the impact of the devotional paintings made for domestic interiors by Giovanni Bellini, whose work had a strong impact on Vivarini. The dark green background behind the Virgin to the right reflects the (often green) hangings Bellini used to separate his holy figures from the landscape beyond. The inclusion of a section or slivers of landscape was also part of the formula used by Bellini and his workshop; here, Vivarini has contained a view of a vast landscape enclosed by tall mountains within a deep stone window frame. At one point in its history the view was overpainted with a different landscape, but this has been removed. The figures are separated from the viewer by a stone ledge -- another device favoured by Bellini, but also frequently used in portraiture in this period.

Style: Early Renaissance
The Virgin and Christ Child are framed by a glossary:classical| marble arch decorated swags of fruit and sculpted glossary:putti. Christ balances precariously on the sill, uncertain on his feet; his anxious mother clearly thinks he is about to fall off the edge. In a gesture familiar to all parents of toddlers, she holds her hand near enough to catch him if he stumbles, and he reaches out towards her to steady himself.

Christ holds a pear but is more interested in a bowl of cherries offered to him by a naked putto; look closely and you can see a translucent moth has landed on top of them. Versions of the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet – Alpha and Omega – appear on  the glossary:pilasters on either side of the arch. This is a title given to Christ in the Book of Revelation. Behind the figures, a rich green curtain partly conceals a hilly landscape. We see a dead tree -- a prefiguration of the Cross on which Christ would be crucified -- and ships sailing on the sea in the distance.

This is one of a small number of paintings we can attribute with confidence to Giorgio Schiavone, an artist trained in Italy but from Dalmatia (a historical region of modern-day Croatia). One of the others, the San Niccolò Altarpiece, is also in our collection. The two do not look especially alike, but some of the features of this painting are found in a Virgin and Child signed by Schiavone, now in the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore: the tenderness of the Virgin supporting the slightly wobbly Christ on a parapet, her cool expression, the paired cherubs, the swags of fruit. The painting of this panel is less accomplished than that of the Baltimore picture and the San Niccolò altarpiece, and many of the details are also found in a Virgin and Child by Schiavone's teacher, Squarcione (now in the Staatliche Museen, Berlin). It was perhaps done early on in Schiavone's apprenticeship to Squarcione.

Squarcione was known for encouraging his students to look at classical art, and the swags of fruit are playful versions of ones he might have seen on classical sculpture. Similar foliage is found in the works of other pupils of Squarcione, including Andrea Mantegna and Marco Zoppo. Schiavone also looked at more recent art and picked ideas from different sources, in particular from followers of Donatello. The stance of the child balancing on the ledge and the Virgin's not-quite-touching hands are also found in a bronze in Donatello's style now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. The sculptural niche hung with leafy festoons and decorated with putti is found in two terracottas possibly by Giovanni da Pisa (Institute of Arts, Detroit and Sammlungen des regierenden Fürsten von Liechtenstein, Vaduz).

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
This stylish woman is Mary Magdalene -- who 'gave herself to all delights of the body' -- holding the pot of oil with which she anointed Christ's feet. She has a circlet of pearls around her head, and her elongated features and fingers emphasise her elegance.

Although a biblical figure, she is dressed in the height of fifteenth-century fashion, her sleeves slashed to reveal her fine linen shift and her blue overdress unbuttoned at the front to show off her red dress. A red cloak interlined with green and trimmed with gold falls in heavy folds at her feet. Mary Magdalene was often depicted in medieval art wearing red, and with loose, uncovered hair. By the Middle Ages Mary had become a conflation of three separate women: the unnamed woman described as a sinner in the Bible who anointed Christ's feet with her hair;  Mary, sister of Lazarus and Martha, who anointed his feet with expensive ointment; and Mary of Egypt, who had sex outside marriage -- seen as immoral in the Middle Ages -- but later renounced her actions.

In a kind of Renaissance virtual reality, Crivelli plays with our knowledge that we are looking at a flat painted surface by creating the illusion of three-dimensional space. Mary stands on a shelf in front of a curved stone recess, rather like a statue, casting a shadow on the wall behind her. The stone itself is cracked and we can see where pieces have fallen off at the edges. Two stone spheres project forwards above her head, and her knobbly toes in their red sandals protrude over the edge of the shelf, as if she is about to step forwards into our world.

Style: Early Renaissance
A youthful Christ sits enthroned, preaching in the Temple of Jerusalem, which is filled with people. He blesses the woman in the lower right corner, who is extending her arms and kneeling in repentance. This is Mary Magdalene, and she wears opulent clothing and lavish jewellery which she will soon give up to pursue a life of piety. The woman standing beside her pointing at Christ is her sister Martha.

The conversion of Mary Magdalene is not specifically mentioned in the Gospels but it was often represented in art and featured in several Renaissance plays; another example in our collection is Paolo Veronese's version, also painted in Venice around the middle of the sixteenth century. The spatial recession within the temple is created by the colonnade and tiled floor leading the eye to the arch in the centre, through which an imaginary city is visible.

Here Pedro Campaña has drawn inspiration from a lost fresco by Federico Zuccaro, datable to 1563 and formerly in the Grimani chapel in the church of San Francesco della Vigna, Venice. The chapel, which was dedicated to Mary Magdalene, also included a fresco of the Raising of Lazarus (Martha and Mary's brother) which has survived. Zuccaro's fresco of the conversion of Mary was severely affected by damp and was completely lost by the eighteenth century, but several of his preparatory drawings for the composition exist. Campaña’s painting may be based on an initial design by Zuccaro.

Among the crowd of onlookers are numerous portraits, presumably of members of the Grimani family. These include the little girl standing behind Mary Magdalene and the two children above her, silhouetted against the columns, as well as the numerous male figures in sixteenth-century dress who look out of the picture.

The colours in this painting have changed drastically, particularly evident in the figure of Christ. The red lake pigment of his robe has faded considerably, its brilliant rose colour surviving only in the deepest shadows. The dull grey-brown cloak he wears was originally blue -- the smalt pigment used here has discoloured.

This work can be reasonably associated with Campaña. A small painting of the same subject by 'Pietro di Fiandra' (literally 'Peter the Fleming') is mentioned in the will of Giovanni Grimani (1506--1593), the powerful patriarch who had assumed responsibility for decorating the chapel in San Francesco della Vigna after 1558. 'Pietro di Fiandra' is the name by which Campaña was also known, referring to his Flemish origins. At the end of the eighteenth century, the art historian Luigi Lanzi wrote that Grimani had invited Campaña to Venice, where he painted various portraits and the 'famous painting of Magdalene led by Saint Martha to the Temple to hear Christ preach'. This, and the evidence provided by Grimani's will, point to Campaña's authorship for this painting, despite the stylistic discrepancies between it and other works by the artist.

After spending extensive periods working in both Spain and Italy, Campaña returned to his native Brussels around the time that this picture and Zuccaro's frescoes were painted.

Style: High Renaissance
Salvator Rosa's dramatic late landscapes presented nature as wild and dangerous, and were filled with striking effects of broken light, jagged trees and remote signs of civilisation. This picture is thought to be by an imitator working in Rosa's style during the late seventeenth century: it lacks the rich colouring and the variety and clarity of detail for which Rosa was celebrated in Rome during the 1650s and 1660s.

The figures in this picture appear to derive from Rosa's The Crucifixion of Polycrates (The Art Institute of Chicago), painted around 1664, where a group is shown recoiling in horror on seeing Polycrates' withered and limp body. Here, something or someone just out of view to the right of the picture has caught their attention. High on the side of a rocky hill are more figures eager to take a look.

Style: Baroque, Academic
This small painting shows the Virgin Mary and infant Christ seated on a turf bench, from which a variety of plants grow. The two holy figures are separated from the landscape beyond by a wattle fence, and framed by the boughs of a small cherry tree.

Martin Schongauer specialised in small-scale pictures of the Virgin and Child. In the late medieval period, the image of the Virgin seated in an enclosed garden (known in Latin as a hortus conclusus) was popular in Schongauer's native Alsace region. The subject comes from the Song of Solomon, a book of the Old Testament, in which a woman is described as an enclosed garden (Song of Solomon 4: 12). In Christian theology the woman was interpreted as the Virgin Mary, and the enclosed garden was thought to be a symbol of her perpetual virginity.

Gardens in Christian imagery also recalled the Garden of Eden, from which Adam and Eve were expelled after eating the forbidden fruit of the tree of life -- humankind's first sin. In Christian theology, Christ was the 'second Adam' and Mary the 'second Eve', and Christ's death at the Crucifixion redeemed the sin of humanity. Schongauer makes reference to Christ's sacrifice with the carnation (or pink) that his mother presents to him. The flower is known in German as the Nelke ('nail flower') because its scent resembles that of cloves, which look like nails. It served as a reminder of the nails that fastened Christ to the Cross.

The mother and child are surrounded by botanical symbols connected to the Virgin: the strawberries in the foreground, which are sweet and have no stone; the violets, red campion and white stock; and the prominent iris in the right foreground, known in German as Schwertlilie ('sword lily'), which relates to her pain at Christ's death. The cherry tree was also symbolic of the Virgin in medieval devotional imagery, and its deep red colour was a reference to the blood of Christ.

It is possible the painting was made by members of Schongauer’s workshop.  His best known and only dated work shares the same subject: a large panel in the Dominican church of Saint Martin in Colmar, which shows the holy figures seated in a rose bower. Although that work has been cut down at the top and sides, we know from a sixteenth-century copy (now in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston) that it once included irises, positioned, as in our panel, on the right.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
Jan Wijnants specialised in painting landscapes which evoke the countryside around Haarlem, where he lived and worked. It was an area characterised by ancient sand dunes overgrown by scrubby woodland and open pastures interlaced with winding cart tracks.

It was also scattered with picturesque ruins. Many buildings had been destroyed by the forces of the Spanish occupation at the time of the siege of Haarlem nearly a century earlier and had never been rebuilt. These ruins feature only occasionally in Wijnants' work, although this archway obviously made an impression on him. He made at least three other pictures of it with figures and animals passing through the arch, or in the foreground.

Of these works, this painting focuses on the ruins most closely and to most dramatic effect. Wijnants has used the wall to create a long diagonal divide that runs from the foreground through to the middle ground of the painting. This line is emphasised by the three trees, and by three architectural markers -- the two gateways and, in the woods far beyond, the distant spire of a church. The diagonal also emphasises the contrast in light and dark in the composition. Much of the foreground and wall are in deep shade, while a luminous sky behind takes up most of the rest of the painting.

Wijnants had a preference for depicting skies which were warm and bright, more evocative of Mediterranean weather than the cooler, greyer atmosphere of the rainy North Sea coast. In this he was influenced by Dutch artists known as the Italianates, who had travelled to and worked in Italy and popularised a romantic, idealised view of landscape suffused with the golden light of the southern sun.

Low light floods through the ruined arch, bathing the sheep and their shepherdess in a summery glow and casting long shadows in the pool of sunshine in the middle of the picture. The contrast between the strong light and deep shade is such that we may not, at first, even notice the second shepherd who has darted off into the shadows to haul back a couple of strays with his crook. This atmosphere of peace and stillness at the end of the day was not created by Wijnants alone. The figures and animals which are so integral to the light effects depicted were added to the scene by his frequent collaborator Adriaen van de Velde. It was common practice for a specialist painter to add figures to a landscape by another artist, but here they are unusually important to the overall scene and have been added with particular sensitivity.

Style: Baroque
Saint Jerome translated the Bible into Latin from the original Greek and Hebrew. He is shown here reading in the peace and quiet of his study, the lower walls of which are lined with a green silk velvet curtain. He has left Rome, which may be the city visible in the distance through the window, and retreated to Bethlehem where he has founded a Latin monastery and a convent.

Jerome's traditional attribute of a lion lies on the ground near his creased slippers. According to legend, Saint Jerome tamed a lion by removing a thorn from its paw while he was living as a hermit in the wilderness of the Syrian desert. The lion is so docile that a partridge passes by unharmed. Partridges appear in other images of Saint Jerome in his study, such as this example by Antonello da Messina (as do the discarded slippers). Two partridges also appear in Catena's A Warrior adoring the Infant Christ and the Virgin. The partridge may be associated with truth and deceit.

Typical of Catena, everything is carefully organised, almost as if to geometrical principles. Jerome is seated on a bench at a spacious L-shaped desk surrounded by books, an inkwell, an unlit candle and Crucifix. The figure of Christ is set against the pale blue sky. It is not clear how the Crucifix is attached to the desk, and it may be intended to represent the subject of Jerome's thoughts -- like a vision. He rests his head in one hand as he reads from an open volume. Another book stands on the elaborate brass lectern before him, which is ornamented with a brass lion's paw and has a long pointed spike to which a candle could be attached. In the open wall cupboards are a wicker flagon, a jar, and more of Saint Jerome's books.

We do not know for whom the picture was painted, but it may have been made to hang in a priest's study. All the objects in the room are of good quality and are meticulously painted. Catena may have been taught by Giovanni Bellini, and it is easy to see the influence of Bellini's clear, crisp style here.

Saint Jerome was traditionally shown in the red robes of a cardinal, even though the office of cardinal did not exist in his time. The pink and blue of Jerome's robes and the blue of his cardinal's hat here are unusual. It is not clear why Catena has chosen to depart from tradition in this way. Until the 1460s it was customary for cardinals to wear a violet or blue cape unless granted the privilege of wearing red when acting on papal business, or in penitence or mourning. It was also common for cardinals to wear blue hats prior to appointment if they were not bishops (Saint Jerome was not a bishop). The blue hood of his cassock is also like those worn by parish priests in Venice at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Perhaps Catena simply wanted the hat to balance the blue of the sky and the hood to draw our eye to Saint Jerome.

There is another version of the painting in the Staedel Institut, Frankfurt-am-Main, as well as one sold at Sotheby's in London on 3 July 1997.

Style: High Renaissance