wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
Although it is signed with the initials 'JR', questions have been raised as to whether this is an original painting by Jacob van Ruisdael or a version made by one of his contemporaries, derived from two similar landscapes he painted around 1655. There is a larger version of the same composition in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden. This varies slightly, most importantly in the right foreground. Where the Dresden painting has an upright birch tree, the National Gallery's version depicts a fallen one.

Despite the doubts, the quality of the painting and the picture's strong sense of atmosphere suggest that it probably is by van Ruisdael. And, as is common in his pictures, there is a feeling of melancholy about the composition. The sky is dark and oppressive, and the background is dominated by shadowy cliffs. In the right foreground, the fallen birch tree -- a common device to help give an impression of depth to a view -- hints at the destructive power of nature. The jagged edges of the stump suggest that it has been blown down by a storm rather than felled with an axe, and this seems to have happened recently: the leaves on the branches are dying but still show signs of green.

To add to this sense of decay, the top of the tower in the middle ground and the walls behind it also seem to be in ruins. The title of the painting refers to this simply as a building but it is almost certainly a church. Gravestones lean up against the nave, which is also ruined and roofless. This is confirmed by looking at the Dresden version, which is called The Monastery and depicts the building more clearly. The spire of what seems to be another church is also visible beyond the large building (it doesn’t appear in the Dresden painting).

The painting has darkened over time, but we can just about make out three tiny figures on the road in front of the church, and a man with a white dog walking out of the picture to the left. Somehow, these signs of life seem to add to the sense of melancholy. They are distant and unreachable. We are cut off from them both by the fallen branches of the birch tree and by the dark waters of the river beyond it.

Style: Baroque
A fresh breeze, a choppy sea. Sails billow, flags fly high and proud. These aren’t the warm, sunny waters of the Mediterranean, as the title implies -- much more the cold northern seas around Bakhuizen’s home in the Netherlands. But Dutch seaports don't have mountains in the background.

The galleys -- the slender rowing boats, typical craft on the Mediterranean since Roman times -- place the scene. Bakhuizen may have seen drawings of galleys, but as far as we know, he never went to the south. The setting is probably imaginary, and chosen with a purpose. This painting is a piece of propaganda.

The galley close to us on the left isn’t a Dutch vessel, yet it flies the Dutch flag. Bakhuizen is suggesting -- for his Dutch audience -- that Dutch maritime and commercial power had spread all over the world, backed by the many Dutch naval and commercial craft he shows approaching his Mediterranean port. Characters on board chat, a sailor gathers in the lowered sail -- everyday events. The sun catches the white turban of the sailor and the characteristic shape of the galley's keel under the transparent water, all under Dutch control.

The man-of-war (or battleship) at anchor in the harbour on the left flies the Dutch flag at the stern. Bakhuizen signed the painting on the white stripe in a flourish of gold paint. Below it, on the stern itself, are the arms of the city of Amsterdam: two golden lions and black St Andrew crosses. Only one sail is furled and the gun ports are open with the canons still protruding, so the great ship has just arrived in port but is still a force to be reckoned with.

It's hard to tell if the ship on the right is sailing towards or away from us (although this would be backwards). The sails are swung round away from the line of travel and are flapping, a way of moving the ship forward but slowing it down. The bow wave gives us the answer: it is heading towards the harbour.

Bakhuizen often painted ships far out at sea less distinctly, making them hazy to emphasise their distance, and the landscape background is often simply sketched in. But his portrayal of each vessel in the foreground is always meticulous. He always painted real ships alive and responding to a real sea that has depth and power. Here, he shows the rigging (ropes that hoist and control the sails) with great accuracy.

In the bow, a row of sailors stand, arms raised, to tie down a furled sail. Others lean over the side, their backs to us, working in unison: a Dutch ship is a well-run ship, he implies. The men are busy and orderly. Even the little waves in the darkened foreground are in unison. They sweep in rhythm, setting the sense of movement, setting the vessels rolling with them.

Bakhuizen’s paintings are physical. You can almost feel the wind and the spray, hear the slap of the rigging and the flap of the flags.

Style: Baroque
This painting is one of a series of panels that decorated a bedchamber in the Borgherini palace in Florence. Together, they tell the story of Joseph from the Old Testament. This panel shows Joseph visited by his brothers (Genesis 43).

Having been sold into slavery by his jealous half-brothers and falsely accused of rape by his master Potiphar's wife (Joseph sold to Potiphar), Joseph ends up in the Pharaoh of Egypt's prison, where he interprets the dreams of Pharaoh's butler and baker (Pharaoh with his Butler and Baker). The butler remembers Joseph's ability to interpret dreams when Pharaoh has a dream of seven fat calves followed by seven lean calves. Joseph says that the dream means that seven years of plenty will be followed by seven years of famine and advises Pharaoh to stockpile grain.

Joseph's brothers have come to Egypt in search of grain (Joseph's Brothers beg for Help). Joseph, now vizier of Egypt, accuses his half-brothers, who do not recognise him, of spying. When the brothers tell Joseph that they have a younger brother at home, Joseph demands that they bring him to Egypt. He imprisons three of his brothers and sends three back home with their sacks and their purses full. The brothers persuade their father Jacob to allow them to return to Egypt with their younger brother, Benjamin, to prove they are honest men.

In this painting, they return to Egypt with Benjamin -- the little boy wearing blue -- and gifts from their father. They present the gifts to Joseph in the centre, still not realising he is their long lost-brother. Joseph then sends his brothers back home but with a cup hidden in Benjamin's sack. The outline of the cup is visible below Benjamin's hand.

The same figures appear in the panel three times as Bacchiacca tells the different parts of the story. This technique is known as continuous narrative. The different characters appear wearing the same clothes in the other panel of the series by Bacchiacca, so it is possible to read the story clearly across both. However, Bacchiacca's figures differ in appearance and clothing from those in the panels by Pontormo, where the people have the oval faces and dark, round eye sockets typical of his own figure style.

The next part of the story is told in Joseph pardons his Brothers, also by Bacchiacca.

Style: High Renaissance
In the seventeenth century, several Dutch artists went to Rome and brought back paintings and sketches. They, and others like van Ludick, used these works as a basis for imaginary paintings of the Italian landscape with a mountainous background and a softly lit Mediterranean sky. Such pictures proved very popular with Dutch collectors and were a strong contrast to landscapes of the flat Dutch countryside -- like Jan van Goyen's A Windmill by a River.

Here, van Ludick shows a high, craggy cliff with a castle on one side, the round tower of which seems to reach the clouds. On the other side the cliffs are only slightly lower, and the two seem to threaten the tiny travellers wading through the water in the chasm between them. Two elegant riders pace back and forth, perhaps waiting for them, perhaps waiting their turn to cross. Only the warm gold of the sky eases the sense of danger that van Ludick evokes.

Style: Baroque
Christ stands at the top of a rocky mound, and the striations -- stripes of gold leaf -- on his clothes make him look as though he is shining. The moment shown is the Transfiguration, when Christ ascended a mountain and according to the Gospel of Matthew, 'he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his garments became white as light' (Matthew 17: 2).

Christ stands between Moses to the left and Elijah to the right. According to the Gospel, they appeared before him and began to speak with him. At this moment, a voice came from heaven: 'This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him' (Matthew 17: 5). The disciples Peter, James and John are kneeling below. They raise their hands up to shield their faces and recoil in fear. The Transfiguration prefigured the Resurrection and Ascension, when Christ ascended in glory from his tomb. This level of meaning was reinforced by the panel's placement next to a scene showing the raising of Lazarus, a miracle in which Christ raised a man from the dead in anticipation of his own conquest of death.

It is suggested that the prophets' sombre brown and purple clothing -- Moses wears an animal skin cloak -- is deliberately dark in contrast with the bright reds, greens and blues of Christ and the disciples to show the revelation of the divine in the person of Christ. A large part of the body of the central kneeling figure, Saint John the Evangelist, has been damaged; originally his robes were entirely red. The damaged area has been restored but not repainted.

This panel was once part of the back predella of Duccio's large Sienese altarpiece, the Maestà. It was positioned between The Healing of the Man born Blind and the Raising of Lazarus. Unlike the front predella these scenes were not alternated with images of prophets but placed next to each other. Before the predella was cut into different scenes in the eighteenth century, the cured blind man in The Healing of the Man born Blind was looking up towards the figure of the transfigured Christ here.

This is a rare Italian painting featuring the Transfiguration -- the event that prefigured Christ's Resurrection, on Easter Day. The Feast of the Transfiguration (6 August) was not universally celebrated in the Western Christian Church in Duccio's lifetime. Another example, a painting on canvas made in Siena four decades earlier by Guido da Siena, has a similar design. The original prototype comes from Byzantium, the Eastern Christian empire, where the feast was celebrated.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
Golden hair, rosy lips and pale skin were the ideal of feminine beauty in fifteenth-century Florence, and were features of images of the Virgin Mary and pagan goddesses as well as portraits of high-status women. Here they are paired with careful observation of the sharp lines of the woman's long nose, revealing that this is a portrait of an individual, however ideally beautiful.

The artist has balanced the protrusion of the woman's nose with the waves of her elaborate hairstyle, which is held together with a white band topped with a cluster of pearls. A fine black band encircles the top of her forehead, drawing attention to her fashionably high hairline. Around her long neck she wears a strand of orange beads with a pendant set with a large pearl. Baldovinetti has used tiny white dots to emphasise the shape and sheen of the beads and pearls. You can also see these little dots, so characteristic of his technique, highlighting the contours of the nose, chin and thick folds of the fabric of the sleeves.

The splendour of her outfit and the woman's young age suggest the picture was painted as a marriage or engagement portrait. The main aim of marriage was to create alliances between families, to strengthen their political and social fortunes -- and to produce children. A girl had very little choice in her husband, as the contract was arranged by her family. The image was made to show off the girl's virtue and the prestige of the family that she would marry into, rather than her personal identity. The perfect white spherical quality of the pearl, for example, symbolised purity -- an essential virtue for a young woman at marriage. According to social custom, the groom's family were responsible for dressing the bride and they would have ordered the finest jewels and fabrics they could afford to show off their wealth and status. The cost of these items, as well as the commemoration of the marriage alliance, justified the expense of commissioning a portrait. The skill of the artist and the beauty of the bride would further enhance their reputation.

By showing the woman in profile Baldovinetti was following a conventional format for portraits in Florence that continued until about 1470. It was adopted from images of emperors on Roman coins and medals and so was a symbol of power and social rank. Renaissance artists also created medals with portraits; those showing women often featured allegories of female virtue on the reverse. Paintings of women in profile became shorthand for the nobility of their character. Here the format serves the function of allotting equal prominence to the adornment on the woman's sleeve as to her face. This emblem, which is made up of three palm leaves bound by a ribbon and framed by two gold-veined feathers, may be her husband's coat of arms -- although no one has yet established which family it belonged to. Its prominence here acts as a visual seal of the woman's new life as a member of her husband's household.

Style: Early Renaissance
The Virgin Mary sits in the corner of a simple room, the Christ Child on her lap. She holds him gently with both hands as he presses his cheek to hers and reaches for her breast. He wears a gauzy shirt which contrasts with the layers of veils and garments covering his mother.

Light streaming through the open window casts a shadow on the wall behind the Virgin, which seems to be made of the grey sandstone known as pietra serena that was often used as a building material in Renaissance Florence. Outside, two slender intertwined trees echo the tender embrace of the Virgin and Christ. A river lined with bushy trees flows through the hilly landscape and past a small town that is surrounded by a crenellated wall.

We don't know who this painting was made for, but a closely related version (now in a private collection) is said to have come from a villa in the outskirts of Florence that formerly belonged to the Ginori family. The peaceful landscape seen through the open window might have chimed with the pastoral setting of the painting's original location. Our painting was in the collection of Count Angiolo Galli Tassi in Florence before being acquired from a dealer in Milan for the National Gallery in 1867.

The workshop of Sandro Botticelli produced numerous paintings that show the Virgin embracing her infant son in a way similar to this painting or with minor changes; a closely related version from Botticelli’s early career is believed to be the prototype for all these versions (Louvre, Paris). Their existence attests to the popularity of both the motif and the artist himself in the decades around 1500. As well as the many versions of this particular image, there are numerous paintings that show the Virgin and Christ Child in different poses, often in a similar interior and with comparable landscape backgrounds (see The Virgin and Child with a Pomegranate, for example). The majority of these works were made by assistants, who reproduced the successful designs accessible to them in Botticelli's workshop. Their quality fluctuates significantly, depending on the skills of the individual assistant. Only a few of these workshop paintings are documented before the nineteenth century, but it is likely that they were made as devotional aids for use in the home. They would, however, also have been valued for their artistic beauty.

Although Sandro Botticelli is now one of the most celebrated artists of the Italian Renaissance, his paintings have not always been appreciated. Demand for his works was very high throughout his lifetime, but he was almost entirely forgotten in later centuries. British artists and collectors played an important role in the reawakening of interest in Botticelli in the nineteenth century, and the National Gallery became an important place to see and study his paintings.

Style: Early Renaissance
Nine men kneel in prayer, heads bare, hats in hands. Behind them stands a saint -- we can only see his hand -- wearing a brown garment (perhaps the habit worn by members of a religious order). It is possibly Saint Francis, who founded the Franciscan Order, presenting the men to the object of their devotion.

These are the male members of a confraternity (a quasi-religious brotherhood) and the painting once formed part of the banner that the confraternity carried in processions; another fragment shows the  female members. We don't know who the artist was, but the style of dress worn in both fragments was fashionable in about 1500, so the banner was presumably painted around this date.

Although they are clearly meant to be recognisable individuals and the two at the front have a pronounced family resemblance, we don't know who these men were. If the saint behind is Francis, they may have been members of the confraternity of the Immaculate Conception, founded in Milan in 1475 under the oversight of the Franciscan Order.

Style: High Renaissance
Against the setting sun, three hunting dogs rest under a large tree, beside an overflowing basket of dead birds and game. The two on the right are chained up following the shoot; one sniffs the ground or laps water from an unseen bowl, while the other stares, distracted, out of the picture frame. The unchained dog looks quizzically at a little owl, a type commonly used as a decoy bird during hunting, which stares unblinkingly out at us.

The distinct plumage of song thrushes, jays and a redstart, as well as a duck and a partridge, can be seen among the unceremonious pile of dead birds. A large hare carcass lies prominently on its back across the birds. Stiff with rigor mortis, its position echoes that of the shotgun lying across its blood-flecked body.

While a naturalistic still life, this scene also invites the viewer to address the hierarchy of nature: the dominance of humans and their weapons, the subservience of the trained hunting dogs and the owl, and the vulnerability of their unfortunate prey. Birds who escaped the shoot fly in the sky above, free for now.

David de Coninck specialised in animal and still-life pictures such as this. He was born in Antwerp, but spent most of his career in Rome, although he also worked in Paris and in Brussels (where he died). This picture, once owned by an Italian nobleman, was probably painted during the artist's stay in Rome between about 1672 and 1694.

Style: Baroque
This glorious celebration of the Virgin Mary was discovered in the nineteenth century in a wood store in the Tuscan town of Asciano, just outside Siena. The store belonged to a monastery of Augustinian monks. The painting was most probably originally made for choir of the monastery's church, Sant'Agostino.

The bulky figure of the Virgin dominates the scene. Placed centrally in an almost symmetrical pose, she is considerably larger than the angels and saints surrounding her. Her tomb lies open and empty as she ascends into heaven where Christ, hovering above, awaits her, along with saints and Old Testament figures. She wears a white damask cloak that opens to reveal her womb and belly, framed by her hands held together in prayer; this highlights her role as the mother of Christ. As she rises, her belt, or girdle, has loosened and is falling to earth. According to legend, Saint Thomas caught it. Here he is shown, fingers straining, grappling to reach it.

The Virgin rests upon a throne of Seraphim and Cherubim  -- the red and blue angelic beings with multiple wings. Around her, angels, their hair wreathed with flowers, play musical instruments. The four at the base of the throne have delicately curved soles that match the arch of their backs -- their energetic poses make it seem as though they are propelling themselves through the air. Their arched backs create a graceful, symmetrical frame for the Virgin, and the folds of their draperies are highlighted with white paint, as through they are reflecting light emanated by her.

Scenes showing the Virgin's assumption provided artists with the opportunity to paint vast landscapes with tiny trees and buildings, a bird's eye view that enhances the sense of the Virgin's distance from the earth. For example, it is a technique also used by Matteo di Giovanni's Florentine contemporary, Franceso Botticini, in his version of the image. The walled hillside town to the left of the landscape may represent Asciano with its two churches, Sant' Agostino and Sant' Agata; the river winding through the expansive valley could be the Ombrone, which runs through a nearby plain.

The panel formed the centre of a multi-panelled altarpiece (a polyptych). There were probably panels on either side, probably showing Saint Augustine and Saint Michael. Panels above probably showed the Archangel Gabriel on one side and the Virgin Mary on the other -- so depicting the annunciation of Christ's birth. It is likely that there were also supporting pilaster panels decorated with saints, as well as a predella, perhaps showing scenes from the life of Saint Augustine.

Images of Mary's assumption were important in Siena, a city that was devoted to the Virgin Mary ever since its citizens, according to legend, had won a battle against the Florentines after dedicating Siena to her protection. The Feast of the Assumption on 15 August was a key celebration in many Sienese churches. The commission of a high altarpiece with such a large and impressive image of the Virgin was a way for towns in the region, like Asciano, to express their allegiance to their capital city.

Style: Early Renaissance