wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
This striking portrait of a woman forms a pair with Campin's A Man -- the sitters were clearly married. We are shown what the couple looked like, but Campin has conveyed their personalities and relationship too. The woman looks younger than her husband, and more forceful and optimistic.

Her rich, purple houpelande is pulled into narrow folds by a tight, wide belt and its sleeves are trimmed in grey fur. She wears a gold ring with a cabochon (uncut) stone, and an elaborate headdress, made of three pieces of white fabric which Campin has manipulated into geometrical folds. Around her neck is a barbet, a cloth worn by married women that covered the chin and neck. On her head is a enveloping howve, which forms two peaks over the modest horns made by her hairstyle. The edges of the cloth have been fluted or goffered -- that is, crimped with heated irons, and the layers secured with pins. She, like her husband, is well dressed -- but their clothes are not excessively rich. This suggests that they were prosperous townsfolk, perhaps from Tournai where Campin lived and worked, although we don't know their identities.

Campin has used subtle geometric patterns to reinforce his characterisation of each sitter, and lit them in different ways. The woman's near eye is in the centre of her panel so that she dominates the composition in a way her husband does not. Her eyes are bright and wide open, with gleaming catchlights, her irises are clear of her lower lids and her eyebrows are well above her upper lids. Her skin is smooth, the tip of her nose turns up and her eyes curve up at the corners, a movement echoed and amplified by the crisp folds of her headdress.

Infrared reflectograms and X-rays reveal how Campin adjusted the headdress to echo the rising lines of the woman's face. In the underdrawing the veils sat lower across her forehead, but Campin painted them in a more upward curve. The barbet tucked under her chin lifts her whole face so that her chin seems to form the bottom of an inverted triangle. Even her neatly folded hands reinforce the impression of buoyancy created by the other patterns.

Campin exploited the technical possibilities of slow-drying oil paint to the full in this painting. The fluted edges of her veils were achieved by painting strokes of thick white, possibly done wet-in-wet, into the veils, which are very pale grey. In order to stress certain contours in the veils, he scored lines into the paint then painted a dark line along the incision to give it greater emphasis. Other incised lines were used to create reflected lights, for instance on the fold of the veil across the woman's left breast. Her fur cuffs were painted grey, with black lines painted wet-in-wet and then dragged or feathered to give the illusion of texture.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
This moody landscape is Jacob de Wet's only landscape without biblical figures, though the stunted, windswept tree in the foreground and the castle tower behind it are repeated -- with variations -- in his painting Abraham and Melchizedek (National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin). At this point in the development of landscape painting, pictures of country scenes were considered lower in status than scenes of stories from the Bible or from classical mythology.

It's thought that the artist may have been a pupil of Rembrandt in the 1630s. The stormy rendering of the evening sky and the strange, rather eerie outlines of the trees against it, as well as the rushing river in the foreground, perhaps have something of Rembrandt's sense of drama.

Style: Baroque
Small figures -- traders returning home from market or a fishing trip -- animate this little scene, but also serve as a measure of scale, alerting us to the size of the ruins. This is an imaginary scene known as a capriccio, but Guardi took inspiration from known buildings -- the arch with a suspended lantern may be derived from the arcade of the Doge's Palace in Venice (though it has been exaggerated, as is appropriate in a capriccio).

Guard has used fluid brushstrokes and thin paint layers, with pen-like details for the buildings. He produced these kinds of pictures in large numbers in his studio in Venice throughout the 1770s and 1780s as popular souvenirs for tourists.

Style: Neoclassical
The Virgin Mary kneels on a grassy patch in the foreground, seemingly undisturbed by our intrusive gaze. Her hands are clasped in prayer as she faces her infant son, who is lying naked on a blanket before her. His right elbow rests on a pillow, his left hand on his stomach. His head is turned to the left, seemingly distracted by something happening outside the space depicted.

The Virgin and Christ Child form a triangular shape that dominates the rectangular picture plane, and their presence in the foreground helps to bring out the blues, greens, reds and yellows of the Virgin’s garments. The green lining of the Virgin's mantle picks up the colours of the grass and trees that populate the landscape behind the pair. These tones would be more powerful were they not covered by yellowed varnish and slightly discoloured retouching.

A dead oak grows somewhat implausibly above the ruinous wall that separates foreground and background; the fresh leaves sprouting from it may comment on the spiritual renewal associated with Christ’s birth. The wall is broken enough to reveal, as if through a window, two shepherds resting on a distant hill. One is playing the bagpipes, but it is the blue angel hovering mid-air that seems to wake the other. This is the Archangel Gabriel, delivering the message of Christ's birth: 'And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord' (Luke 2: 10--11). That Christ is neither shown in swaddling clothes nor lying in a manger is probably due to another important account: the visions of the fourteenth-century mystic Saint Bridget of Sweden. Widely read across Europe, Bridget's visions of the Nativity, said to have occurred during her visit of the Holy Land, had a profound impact on the representation of that subject in art. Bridget memorably described the newborn as lying naked on the ground in front of his fair-haired mother.

We don't know who this painting was made for, but it is likely that it adorned a Florentine household, offering a visual aid for prayer. Lorenzo, a devout Christian himself, specialised in the production of religious paintings. Thanks to his training -- alongside Leonardo da Vinci -- in the highly successful workshop of the Florentine painter and sculptor Andrea del Verrocchio, which he later inherited, Lorenzo developed an almost sculptural approach to painting. Subtle gradations of colour, seen especially in the flesh tones, help to create the illusion of three-dimensional form.

Style: Early Renaissance
Saint Catherine of Alexandria's vibrant green and red robes stand out against the plain dark background. She wears a fine crown as she was a princess, and holds a fresh green palm, the symbol of martyrs -- those killed for their Christian faith. She rests its stem against a spiked wooden wheel, the instrument of her torture; according to legend, it miraculously broke into pieces and Catherine survived. The sword she holds is a reminder of her eventual execution by beheading. An angel accompanies the saint, playing a small stringed instrument, possibly a viol, which we can just make out.

This is the left-hand shutter of a triptych altarpiece commissioned by the English merchant, Paul Withypool. The other shutter, which is also in the National Gallery's collection, shows Saint Ursula. The central panel shows Withypool in prayer before the Virgin and Child.

The reverse of the panel is inscribed in Latin with the words that the Archangel Gabriel spoke to the Virgin Mary at the Annunciation (Luke 1: 28): GRACIA PLENA / DOMINVS TECUM ('Hail [Mary] full of Grace, the Lord be with you'). Two cherubs support a medallion that depicts Saint John the Baptist, who holds a reed cross and a scroll inscribed with words from the Gospel of John (John 1: 29 and 36): ECCE AGNVS DEI ('Behold the Lamb of God'). He point to the lamb in his arms.

Withypool was a member of the guild, now called the Company of Merchant Taylors, of which Saint John the Baptist was the patron saint. The coat of arms of the Withypool family are below.

Style: High Renaissance
In this small panel, the Virgin Mary sits under a tree and offers her breast to the Christ Child, who grasps it with both hands but turns away to look out towards the viewer. It is not a specific image of the Rest on the Flight into Egypt -- it lacks details such as Joseph, the donkey and luggage -- but it might have been inspired by prints of the Rest on the Flight by Lucas Cranach the Elder or Lucas van Leyden, or pictures of it by followers of Rogier van der Weyden, Hans Memling or Gerard David.

The geometric arrangement of the composition, with diagonals running from lower left to upper right, and centring on the extraordinary folds of drapery pulled in a line between the Virgin's right foot and left knee, is typical of mature Bernaert van Orley. The large baby with his very large face may have been inspired by Italian originals but has similarites with babies in van Orley's signed paintings of the holy family of 1521 and 1522 (Louvre, Paris; Prado, Madrid). The face of the Virgin and the parallel diagonals of the composition seem most strongly reminiscent of his works from 1525 to 1535: the Haneton Triptych (Royal Museums of Fine Art of Belgium, Brussels), and his tapestries of the Life of Jacob (Royal Museums of Art and History, Brussels) and the Battle of Pavia (Museo di Capodimonte, Naples).

The landscape may be by an assistant who specialised in them and who worked on other pictures by van Orley. It seems to have been painted first, with a space left for the figures. It was painted with great speed and skill: there is very little underdrawing and the painter seems to have blotted the paint in the foreground with his fingers before applying the leaves and flowers.

Style: High Renaissance
The magnificently dressed Virgin Mary is seated in a garden, on a turf bench supported on planks of wood. The Christ Child is on her knee, playing with a whirligig: pulling the string would make the part with sails fly upwards like a helicopter. There are people and buildings in the background landscape, but they seem not to have any narrative significance.

Such benches seem to have been common in small gardens or  'paradises' and were planted with low-growing, sweet-smelling flowers. Violets, strawberries, plantains, dandelions -- two with 'clock' seed heads -- and columbines grow on the bench and at her feet. The plants are quickly painted, so we can't identify every one. Resting on the bench is an earthenware pot in which grow carnations, protected and supported by a wooden frame. Carnations need special care because their heads are too heavy for their stems, and they have to be moved to shelter during cold weather. Jan Provoost seems to have liked painting flowerpots as well as vases of flowers and flowers supported on trellises.

The figures of the Virgin and Child paraphrase those in the Virgin and Child with Saints Donatian and George and Canon Joris van der Paele by Jan van Eyck, dated 1436, then in the Collegiate Church of St Donatian in Bruges and now in the Groeningemuseum in the same city. The visual reference to the famous van Eyck would have been obvious to contemporaries.

The attribution to Provoost is convincing if allowance is made for the damages, especially in the flesh of the Virgin and infant Christ. The surprisingly blue landscape is apparently typical of Provoost, who seems to have liked azurite pigment and mixed greens. He painted relatively quickly and did not labour with enormous care on small details, such as landscapes, flowers, textiles and jewels. The sheep in the background have been reduced to summary dashes of white paint. The underdrawing is idiosyncratic, but completely compatible in style with the underdrawing in Provoost's Last Judgement (Groeningemuseum), Glorification of the Virgin (State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg) and Zacharias (Prado, Madrid).

Infrared photographs and reflectography reveal a great deal of underdrawing, while a great many changes were also made during the course of painting. For example, the Virgin was drawn wearing a crown and Christ's legs were in a different position; he may have been wearing a shirt. Provoost may not have run a large workshop and seems to have made his own underdrawing, whereas many artists delegated this aspect of producing a painting to assistants.

Style: High Renaissance
This picture was bought by the National Gallery as a portrait of Isotta da Rimini -- wife of the Lord of Rimini, Sigismondo Malatesta --  possibly on the basis of comparison with a portrait medal by Matteo de' Pasti. While it is clearly idealised to reflect Renaissance concepts of beauty -- blonde hair, pale skin, a high forehead -- the artist maintains the woman's characterful elongated nose, which does not feature on the medal. It was thought to be by Piero della Francesca, whose portrait of Sigismondo is now in the Louvre, Paris.

Like Baldovinetti's Portrait of a Lady in a Yellow Dress, the picture was probably commissioned by the family of her future husband at the time of her marriage. She is well groomed and presented in the finest jewel-encrusted accessories: her headdress is sewn with pearls and gems in a fan pattern, and the pearl adornments of her transparent veil tickle her smooth shoulders. The pearl was associated with purity, an essential and celebrated quality for a young woman about to be married.

The profile view was falling out of fashion by the time this image was made but it is used here because it recalls Renaissance portrait medals.  The reverses of medals of men were usually cast with images that symbolised valour, strength or some other virtue regarded as traditionally male; those of women were cast with visual allegories representing virtues such as modesty or chastity, deemed suitable for a wife. As a result, the profile view was often associated with these virtues. It also avoided the issue of a viewer's direct engagement with the sitter -- here the woman cannot return their admiring gaze, showing appropriate reserve.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
This view shows a path running along a white wall with a grassy common to the right. The wall features two pale brown gates. Trees behind the wall suggest a garden or orchard. Although we are not sure of the exact location of the scene, it is almost certainly in the vicinity of Auvers-sur-Oise, which  Daubigny first visited in 1850, and where he later built a house and studio. He painted a number of views of the walled gardens running along the banks of the Oise, for example Banks of the Oise near Auvers (Mesdag Collection, The Hague). While the view here does not include the river itself, the white wall and green door suggest a similar subject. Cezanne and Pissarro also portrayed such walled gardens both in Auvers and in the neighbouring village of Pontoise.

The whole picture is broadly painted and light in tone. The pale grey paint of the wall is overlaid with small, square touches of creams, yellows and pinks, giving a sense of dappled sunlight. The path is similarly painted in broad touches  of cream, pink and green paint.

Style: Barbizon
This peaceful river landscape depicts the Oise near the village of Auvers, to the north-west of Paris. In 1860, Daubigny bought a plot of land there and built a home. At the far right, mostly hidden by a clump of trees, is his studio boat, nicknamed Le Botin.  The cabin is painted in grey and the boat itself in two bands, red above black.  Daubigny’s daughter-in-law, Madame Karl Daubigny, recalled that the artist bought a boat originally intended to be a ferry, but turned it into a sailing boat with oars and a cabin at one end, which he used as a studio. Its name, which means ‘Little Box’, came about after an argument between its crew and that of a barge, a member of which yelled out, ‘He’ll [the cabin boy] drive us nuts with his Botin’.

From 1857 Daubigny  used it to paint many views, particularly along the Oise. Its last outing was in 1867, after which he installed it in his garden in Auvers, and acquired a second vessel for the river. Madame Karl Daubigny also wrote that Daubigny painted the cabin in stripes of bright colour, but in all the depictions of the boat, by both Daubigny himself and by other artists, such as Corot, it is shown as grey. Daubigny’s example inspired Monet to acquire a studio boat in 1872, which he depicted in The Floating Studio  of 1874 (Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, Otterlo).

The view here was painted in a number of layers over a period of time. The paint layers are comparatively thin, so the warm colour of the wood support shows through in a number of places. The brushwork is, on the whole, very fine and feathery, for example in the reeds surrounding the boat. The water is painted in smooth horizontal strokes interspersed with vertical strokes indicating disturbances and reflections. Water lilies are added with larger touches of paint. By contrast, the trees in the background are more broadly painted, and the sky, in relation to the rest, has been handled quite roughly, with swirling clouds depicted in circular strokes of different greys.

Style: Barbizon
Saint John the Baptist -- who, according to the Bible, wandered the desert preaching about Jesus -- is shown in the centre of this panel. The camel-skin tunic he wears beneath his pink robes identifies him, as does the scroll bearing his declaration of the coming of Christ: 'I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness. Prepare the way of the Lord.' He stands between Saint John the Evangelist, who holds a book, and the apostle Saint James, who holds a pilgrim's staff.

Nardo has contrasted the simplicity and solidity of the saints' figures with an attention to decorative details, which are painted meticulously. The saints stand on a lavish red, blue and gold textile dotted with vine tendrils, birds -- identified as finches -- and carnations. Carnations, also known as dianthus ('flower of God'), were associated with Christ's suffering and death: they smell like cloves, which were thought to resemble the nails used at the Crucifixion. The textile has been painted using the sgraffito technique, in which an area is covered in gold leaf and then red paint, which is scratched away in areas to reveal the designs. Some parts are given extra detail using deep blue ultramarine paint, a very expensive pigment.

When the National Gallery bought the picture in 1858 it was described as having come from the 'hospital church' -- a church connected to a hospital -- of Santi Giovanni e Niccolò in Florence. At the time the picture was made the church had a different name and was dedicated to Saint John the Baptist -- explaining his prominence in the panel, and the absence of Saint Nicholas. The hospital was run by the Knights Hospitaller, a religious order that had a military function and also a tradition of caring for the sick. The order was also known as the Knights of Saint John because of their patron saint.

The altarpiece was most likely paid for by the Benini family, who had founded the church. In his will, Bindo di Lapo Benini had left the church to the Knights in accordance with the wishes of his brother, who had been the prior of the Knights Hospitaller in Pisa. Saint James was probably chosen to honour to their father, Lapo (short for Jacopo, the Italian for James).

The saints were originally separated by twisting colonettes (small columns). Saints John the Baptist and James are on the same panel, which is unusual: saints were normally painted on separate panels. The figures are all full length, of equal size -- and therefore importance -- and stand on the same piece of fabric. This represents a transition between the traditional polyptych and the single-panel altarpiece known as a pala, which became the standard form in the sixteenth century. Pala altarpieces showed sacra conversazione ('holy conversations'), where saints occupy the same spatial setting as though they are speaking with one another. The tops of the panel have been cut down and may have been pointed originally. There were probably additional pinnacle panels, now lost, on top of this section.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
A gilded background gives this scene an ethereal quality, but the delicate arrangement of pink and grey columns and arches tells us that we are in fact on earth -- we're in the home of the Virgin Mary. Heaven has broken in: the Archangel Gabriel, his back heel lifted as he walks, strides in through a slightly pointed archway, his wings streaked through with gold. He blesses the Virgin with his right hand and in his left holds a white staff tipped with a fleur-de-lis, a stylised lily.

The Virgin, enclosed within an open arcade of soft grey stone, stands in front of an open door and draws her arm up across her breast in fear. The movement has created a sweeping fold in her blue cloak, revealing her red dress beneath and highlighting her belly. At the bottom edge of this curve of fabric is an open book; the Virgin has been interrupted while reading the Old Testament scriptures. The page is open at the words of the prophet Isaiah who foretold this moment: 'Behold a Virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name [Emmanuel].'

This echoes the words Gabriel speaks to the Virgin in the biblical account, here, perhaps, standing in for them. Meanwhile the moment of conception occurs between the angel and the Virgin: the Holy Ghost in the form of a small dove descends to impregnate the Virgin by means of the words she hears; it is encircled in gold, between three rays emanating from an arc of blue -- the heavens. The vase of lilies embellishing the plain pink wall at the centre of the image represents the Virgin's purity.

Duccio has placed an extraordinary scene in an ordinary -- and believable -- setting. These religious figures aren’t oversized compared to the buildings, as they sometimes were in paintings made at this time; they fit perfectly into their surroundings. This, combined with the blue, pink, gold and soft lilacs, creates a sense of balance and harmony. The architecture's simplicity makes it easy to see that the arches are pointed where the divine enters the scene (in the form of the angel, the dove of the Holy Ghost and the open door of the house). Pointed arches were the new style in Gothic architecture; Duccio's selective use of this trend to accentuate the holy might mean he intended to express the Annunciation's importance as the beginning of a new epoch, the beginning of the New Testament.

This painting comes from the far left edge of the front predella of a large double-sided altarpiece called the Maestà, made by Duccio for Siena Cathedral. It was the first in a series of images showing the infancy of Christ. Each scene was alternated with a full-length image of a prophet. Next to this scene is Isaiah holding a scroll with the same words as those in the Virgin's open book.

Our collection also includes two paintings from the back predella, which showed images of Christ's ministry: The Healing of the Man born Blind and The Transfiguration.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance