wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
A crumbling, overgrown archway towers above a man and a young child carrying a stick, who are picked out by warm sunlight. The eye is led into the scene by the contrast of light, which illuminates the white stone building beyond, and shade. The use of simple blocks of colour and black lines to suggest architectural details might give the impression that this work was painted quickly on the spot, but it was most likely created in Guardi's studio.

This is one of a group of very small capricci, which have been framed together since the early nineteenth century (in another, a stylish couple wander towards a ruined domed building, while the third shows two men standing beside a calm pool and huge archway). These imaginary scenes, inspired by the Italian countryside and classical architecture, were collected as souvenirs by visitors to Venice, where Guardi lived and worked.

Style: Neoclassical
This small, exquisite portrait of a young boy is a very rare example of the work of the Venetian painter and manuscript illuminator known as Jacometto. The boy's smooth, creamy skin is painted with such fine and densely placed brushstrokes that the paint looks like enamel. His cheeks are flushed almost neon pink, his prominent pouting lips a more subtle shade of rose; both emphasise the vitality of youth. His eyes are clear and his gaze sincere. His shiny strawberry blonde waves are combed to perfection.

Although we don't know who this boy was, Jacometto's image is a portrait of youth and beauty. The tradition of creating idealised portraits was well established by the time Jacometto made this picture; Renaissance thinkers theorised that outward appearance was the mirror of the soul. The main reason that portraits were commissioned was to commemorate someone for posterity and so it was not just their face but also their character and soul that were thought to be present in the image. The scale of this portrait and its reverse, which is decorated to resemble marble, suggest that it was intended to be carried with its owner as a keepsake (like a photograph) rather than hung permanently on a wall. Several other portraits attributed to Jacometto, including his Portrait of a Man, have painted reverses.

Portraiture was an important type of painting in Venice and its citizens were keen patrons and collectors of portraits. Venice was a Republic ruled by an elected leader -- the doge -- rather than a dukedom like many Italian states. Venetian painters portrayed middle-class citizens as well as leaders, perhaps explaining why there are so many surviving portraits of unidentified sitters. It also explains why many of them were dressed in the same plain, unostentatious outfits as this young man. Venetians valued the philosophy of a collective identity and being painted wearing the outfit of the citizens, without any personalised embellishment, reinforced this sense of unity.

Jacometto has adopted a format for portraits that was popularised in the city by the Sicilian painter Antonello da Messina. If you look at Antonello's Portrait of a Man you'll see that both share the plain dark background and a close-up view, showing only the head and shoulders. In both the sitter's body is angled slightly to his right, facing into a strong light, so the face is seen in a three-quarter view and partially shadowed on the left-hand side.

Antonello arrived in Venice in 1475 and his portrait style, strongly influenced by examples from the Southern Netherlands, soon became hugely popular. It is not difficult to see why local artists like Jacometto quickly borrowed the elements of his successful formula. The only difference is that here the boy does not look at us, as many of Antonello's sitters do. Instead, he looks into the distance; he does not engage with viewers directly. The direct gaze of Antonello's portraits was not universally adopted --  Giovanni Bellini, for example, always showed his sitters looking beyond the picture surface, never catching the viewer's eye.

Style: Early Renaissance
A nymph lying in the foreground seems to be asleep, although her pose suggests that she is enjoying a solitary moment of ecstasy which is about to be interrupted. Beside her a golden-haired child watches as a satyr gently removes her delicate white robe. Another satyr peeps from behind a tree, smiling mischievously. In ancient Roman art, satyrs are represented as lustful, drunken woodland gods and companions of the god of wine Bacchus. The woman’s pale skin, soft curves and rosy cheeks contrast with the tanned skins and muscular bodies of the satyrs.

This erotic painting was previously been thought to depict the story of Jupiter and the nymph Antiope. According to Roman mythology, in one of his earthly adventures Jupiter disguised himself as a satyr, crept up on the nymph Antiope and ravished her. But in Ovid's version of the story Antiope is not asleep (Metamorphoses, VI: 110-11).

Alternatively, the nymph could be Venus, goddess of love, but we cannot see any of her attributes in this painting. An earlier version of this subject (now in the Kunsthaus, Zürich) painted by Poussin shows a pair of white doves, which are associated with Venus and symbolise lust. The child could be Venus' son, Cupid, whose quiver, or bag, holding his arrows hangs in the tree above him in the Zürich picture.

Paintings of female nudes were made popular by the sixteenth-century Italian artists who were admired by Poussin and his patrons. Poussin may well have been inspired by their work: Agostino Carracci's print of a Satyr and Nymph shows the satyr behind the tree masturbating, which may also be happening in Poussin's painting. In both compositions, the tree in front of the satyr has a phallic appearance.

Painted in around 1627, this is an early example of Poussin's work. He was a young painter living in Rome without regular patronage, and this may have led him to paint erotic subjects that appealed to a wide audience and could be easily sold. An X-ray image made by the National Gallery shows that the canvas was used for different drawings that do not relate to the final painting, and we know that Poussin experimented with compositions before deciding which one to paint. Our picture has an unfinished look, particularly in the sketchy appearance of the tree trunk and foliage, although the bodies are more finished.

Poussin's work had an impact on future generations of artists: William Etty's (1787--1849) A Sleeping Nymph and Satyr, painted in 1828 and now in the Royal Academy in London, is based on the painting we see here or the version in Zürich

Style: Baroque, Academic
In 1751, a rhinoceros known affectionately as Miss Clara was publicly exhibited at the Venice Carnival after an extremely successful European tour; Pietro Longhi painted this picture around the same time. Brought from India by Douwe Mout van der Beer, a captain of the Dutch East India Company, Miss Clara was one of the few rhinos that had been seen in Europe since 1515, when Dürer made his famous woodcut based on drawings of one that had been shown in Lisbon. She created a sensation: poems and songs were written about her, she was the subject of numerous paintings, tapestries, medals and sculptures, and ladies even styled their hair in the shape of a horn. In 1758 Miss Clara was taken to London, where she died soon after.

Sadly, in this painting you can see that Miss Clara's horn has been removed. The showman holds it along with a whip, perhaps used to encourage the animal to move about. Many of the spectators have masked faces to conceal their identity and social status, as was customary during the Carnival. Longhi has captured a glimpse of the city's amusements during the festival, which often included exotic animals such as lions and elephants, but this is actually a rather sombre scene: Miss Clara stands in a simple enclosure, languidly munching on hay. The background is limited to one wooden wall and raised seating. Our attention is drawn to different textures, like the black lace worn by the doll-like woman in the front row and the silk dresses of those further back, as well as the rhino's rough, dark skin.

Longhi painted an earlier version of this scene, now in the Ca' Rezzonico in Venice, for the Venetian nobleman Giovanni Grimaldi. Our work was commissioned not long after by his contemporary, Girolamo Mocenigo. During Clara's visit to Paris two years later, Jean-Baptiste Oudry painted a life-size portrait of her (Staatliches Museum, Schwerin), looking poised and regal in front of a mountainous landscape, her hide shiny and anatomy painted with great precision.

Longhi belonged to a family of artists in Venice, and was best known for his small-scale paintings of everyday life during the 1740s and 1750s. The National Gallery owns several of his witty scenes of daily life, including A Fortune Teller in Venice and A Lady receiving a Cavalier.

Style: Rococo, Neoclassical
An assistant prepares a plaster at the table while the doctor treats a patient’s foot. This composition is derived from works by  Adriaen Brouwer, who had a profound influence on Teniers.  Teniers made several variations on the theme, which were often imitated by his contemporaries and later artists. There was a tradition in Flemish painting of ridiculing quack doctors and their practices, and this may be the case here. It is possible, for example, that the open-mouthed fish hanging from the ceiling suggests gullibility.

Although the composition is strongly reminiscent of Teniers’s work and it is signed (bottom left), it is too poorly executed to be by him. The signature is probably false, and the painting made by an imitator after Teniers's death. Other imitations of the same composition survive (in the Wellcome Collection, London, for example), and they may have all been copying an original work by Teniers, since lost.

Style: Baroque
Saint Mary Magdalene stands behind a stone ledge and holds her attribute -- the pot of oil with which she anointed Christ's feet. An open book, decorated in the style of the fifteenth century, rests on the ledge; the layout of the text shows that it is a prayer book. Behind the saint, a window opens onto a landscape -- the cliffs and buildings on the left are a fairly accurate view of La Sainte-Baume, east of Marseille, where, according to legend, Mary Magdalene spent the last years of her life (also shown in The Magdalen in a Landscape).

While the white cross and the bridge just beyond it are probably inventions, the group of buildings further up the hill may be the hospice and convent at the entrance to the cave where Mary Magdalene meditated. The church-like building on top of the rock in the upper left hand corner is the chapel at 'Saint Pilon', to which angels carried Mary Magdalene seven times a day, and from which she heard the music of paradise. The coastal town on the right is perhaps Marseille, where Mary, her sister Martha and their brother Lazarus landed from a ship without a pilot or rudder -- it had been miraculously guided there from the Holy Land.

The composition is based on Saint Mary Magdalene by Quinten Massys (Louvre, Paris). The Master of 1518 seems to have made an effort to suggest that Mary Magdalene lived in an exotic past: her clothes are extravagantly rich and present a strange assortment of elements of historic, German, Italian, oriental and fancy dress. Her luxuriant hair has been braided into two heavy plaits crossed at the back of her neck and brought forward over her shoulders to meet behind her pot. This style is reminiscent of Venus in Botticelli's Venus and Mars; the painter of the Magdalen may have seen a print by one of Botticelli's Florentine contemporaries.

Style: High Renaissance
Pietro Longhi  is best known for his small-scale paintings that give a glimpse inside the houses of middle-class Venetians and show people engaging in the activities of polite society. We don't know what this painting depicts, though it might be a scene from a play. In an elegant room, a servant hands a plate of food and a spoon to a man. Standing nearby are two young women dressed in beautiful gowns, who hold hands and stare out of the painting. One of them points towards the seated man.

Prominently displayed on the wall behind is a engraved portrait by Andrea Zucchi of Gerardo Sagredo, who was elected Procurator of San Marco  in 1718 (the most prestigious office in the Republic of Venice after that of Doge). The scene could be set in the Palazzo ​Sagredo, Gerardo's family home, and could show an act of charity towards an old man in need of a meal. Gerardo Sagredo had two daughters, Caterina and Mariana, who may be the young women depicted here.

Style: Rococo, Neoclassical
From around the late 1850s or early 1860s  Corot worked on a series of studio landscapes based on one of the lakes at Ville-d'Avray, near Paris, where he would often stay in his parents' former house. This view is particularly closely related to a painting of around the same period in the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, The Bent Tree (L'Arbre Penché). The foreground trees, including the single upright trunk at the right and that reaching out across the picture, are based on a drawing of 1826 he had made during his first visit to Italy in 1825--8, Clump of Trees at Civita Castellana (National Gallery of Art, Washington). In many of his related views the foreground trees follow the drawing closely, but here, one of the later variants, they have become stylised and decorative, pared down to formal elements within the composition.

In tonality and paint handling this work represents a change of style in Corot's work around this time. Colour became less important and he would work the picture surface with innumerable small touches of paint to create a shimmering effect. The foliage on the branches to the left of the main clump of trees is painted in such a manner, with small strokes of grey mingling with the paint of the sky. Both the man leaning over in his boat and the woman reaching up into the tree to gather twigs are very common motifs in Corot's work, the woman famously appearing in Souvenir of Mortefontaine (about 1864,  Louvre, Paris). She is also seen in the earlier Peasants under the Trees at Dawn. The interior of the boat is painted with streaks of bright orange, and the same colour is used in the cap of the standing woman. It is a cadmium orange or yellow, a pigment which came into use in the 1840s, and one much used by Corot to add bright accents of colour to the predominant grey-green tonality of his landscapes.

Style: Barbizon
The central panel of this triptych shows the crucified Christ. The scene is portrayed dramatically, emphasising Christ's pain and suffering: his eyes are rolled back and his mouth is open in agony. Angels -- some covering their eyes unable to bear the sight -- gather the blood from his wounds in chalices resembling those which hold the wine of the Eucharist, drunk at Mass. Their emotion is echoed by the Virgin Mary, who is supported by two other women as she faints below the Cross, and by Christ's so-called 'beloved' disciple, often thought to be John the Evangelist, who wrings his hands in a traditional expression of grief.

From the wounds in his feet, we can tell that the figure who wraps his arms around the base of the Cross is Saint Francis. Francis lived in the thirteenth century but he is shown here because of his practice of prayer in which he contemplated Christ's suffering on the Cross. His prayer was so intense that he had a vision of Christ crucified and, at that moment, received the stigmata (the wounds of Christ) in his hands and feet. The saint's presence here reinforces the devotional purpose of the painting, to enable worshippers to follow his example and to meditate upon the Crucifixion.

The two outer panels -- the triptych's 'wings' -- show the events before and after the Crucifixion. The sequence begins in the upper left corner of the left wing with Christ's prayer before he is arrested, known as the Agony in the Garden; Saints Peter, James and John are asleep in the foreground. In the distance Judas leads the Roman soldiers to Christ to arrest him. The scene below shows him carrying his cross to Calvary, a scene often called the Way to Calvary. The Virgin and two female disciples help Christ to carry the Cross. The upper section of the right wing shows the Resurrection, while below, Christ's mother and disciples mourn over his dead body.

Triptychs like this were portable altarpieces which could be used for devotion wherever the owner might be. The reverse of its wings, which would have folded over the central panel to protect it, are painted to imitate red marble. The frame is probably original although it has been restored. The upper central part shows the monogram made popular by Saint Bernardino, a Franciscan preacher who was devoted to the name of Christ: 'IHS' are the initials of the Greek version of Christ's name. The inclusion of the monogram, as well as Saint Francis, suggest that the triptych was probably made for a Franciscan. Indeed, its last recorded location was at a church in Aquila, in the mountainous Abruzzo area in eastern Italy, that was dedicated to Saint Clare, who had founded an order of Franciscan nuns.

Style: Early Renaissance
Christ's body has just been taken down from the Cross, and his family and followers mourn over him -- a moment known as the Lamentation. The central group here are defined by their expressions of intense grief. A variety of onlookers surround them, and the scene extends into a receding cityscape that gives this small picture a grandiose air.

Rembrandt has cleverly used the lighter end of his tonal range so that the Virgin Mary and Christ's body are illuminated, standing out in this dark picture. Mary has fainted, and almost looks like an extension of her son; a woman dressed in a white headscarf holds her limp right hand. The older man supporting her reclining body has been identified as Nicodemus. Meanwhile, Mary Magdalene passionately embraces Christ’s feet.

This work is accepted as an autograph grisaille (a picture painted in shades of black, white and grey) by Rembrandt. The top and bottom bits, however, are later additions by a different hand, although probably made under Rembrandt’s supervision. The picture has a very complex makeup. Rembrandt himself began by making an oil sketch on paper; he then tore out a section and mounted the rest on canvas. He continued the design on the canvas at the lower right. Finally, someone added canvas strips at the top and bottom, completing what we see today.

The picture is likely a study for an etching that was never executed, and there is some iconographical evidence to support this claim. Christ was crucified alongside two men, the so-called Good Thief and Bad Thief. In this picture, the Bad Thief -- identifiable by his twisted body hanging in darkness -- would have been on Christ’s right-hand side, which was traditionally reserved for the Good Thief. However, when making an etching the whole composition is reversed in the printmaking process; the positions of the two thieves would have therefore been reversed. Rembrandt’s Ecce Homo, another grisaille in the National Gallery's collection, was made as a preparatory study for an etching that we know still exists in two different states.

Rembrandt made a drawing of the same subject while he was working on this grisaille, which is now in the British Museum, London -- it is a study related to the lower part of the picture. Similarly to the painting, Rembrandt made many alterations and additions to his drawing. The laborious processes of these Lamentations must have meant that Rembrandt was invested in the subject.

Style: Baroque
An old woman looks down intently at the large book she holds open -- very likely a Bible, since she's dressed in the plain clothing often worn by Calvinists, followers of a strict branch of the Protestant faith. This isn't a portrait but a tronie, pictures which showed stock characters, often with exaggerated facial expressions or gestures. In this case, though, it appears to be a visual example of what a pious old age should be.

David Teniers the Younger was immensely successful as a painter and his work was widely copied and imitated. This appears to be an imitation painted at the end of the seventeenth century, probably after Teniers' death.

Style: Baroque
This painting comes from the back of the predella of the large, double-sided altarpiece made for Siena Cathedral, known as the Maestà.

Jesus, in a vivid blue robe edged with a fine gold line, places his finger over the eyelids of a man who clings to a stick made from a simple tree branch. The stick shows that he is blind -- he uses it to guide his steps. This episode in Jesus's ministry is told in the Gospel of John. Jesus and his disciples came across a blind beggar. He made a paste from earth and is shown here wiping it across the man's eyelids. Jesus then told him to go and wash in the pool of Siloam; after doing this, he was, according to witnesses, able to see again. At the right edge of the panel Duccio shows the man again, by the pool. He has laid down his stick, which he no longer needs.

The figure of Jesus stooped over the man divides the scene into two. Behind him are his disciples, huddled together. The elder disciples, perhaps Peter and Paul, are at the front of the crowd. Only the tops of the heads of those behind are visible, emphasising how dense the crowd is and giving the image a sense of depth.

The detailed architectural structures of the background -- with open doors and windows, archways and semi-enclosed courts -- also add depth and complexity to the scene. The turreted towers and beamed ceilings reflect the architecture of a medieval city like Siena, rather than Roman-occupied Jerusalem where the event was believed to have taken place centuries earlier. Duccio has set one of Christ's greatest miracles in the home town of the people who would have seen the painting, bringing it to life for them.

The pool of Siloam is represented as a small street fountain; green water gushes from the mouth of a sculpted lion's head. This detail is found in other, earlier, Italian versions of the picture and also in a Byzantine manuscript; it is possible this image was drawn from a Byzantine manuscript. These versions also show the man twice, usually being healed and then washing his eyes in the pool. Here, the man instead looks up and raises his hand in amazement or reverence. The scene next to this one on the predella was The Transfiguration -- when Jesus was filled with divine light. The blind man in this scene would have looked up towards the the transfigured Christ, acknowledging the source of his healing but also recalling Jesus's words to his disciples as he healed the man: 'While I am in the world, I am the light of the world' (John 9: 5).

Infrared reflectography, which reveals the drawing beneath the paint, shows that two artists worked on this scene. Duccio himself probably drew the figures and sketched in the architecture but it seems to have been drawn more precisely by a different artist -- one of Duccio's assistants. If you look closely, you'll see fine indentations along the edges of the buildings and their features. These were made with a sharp pointed tool and a ruler to ensure their straightness and accuracy. Part of the blind man's face, including both eyes and nose, has been restored.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance