wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
Murillo probably painted this self portrait in about 1670, when he was in his early fifties -- his hairline is receding and his moustache turning grey. He is dressed in black, with a delicate lace collar known in Spain as a valona. He looks out at us, his pose both relaxed and self-assured. The warm tones of his skin contrast with the cool stone of the frame on which he rests his hand. It is decorated with scrolls and foliage, an effect commonly seen in engraved portraits or in book frontispieces.

He has placed himself inside a fictive frame, his right hand emerging from the stone surround as if he were coming alive and entering our space. This motif is something you see in seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish paintings and engravings, and these may have been Murillo's source of inspiration -- such works were available in collections in Seville, where Murillo spent his entire career.

The objects laid out on the ledge below -- a palette and brushes, a red chalk drawing, a chalk holder, wooden ruler and compass -- tell us that Murillo is an artist. The drawing may allude to Murillo's central role in establishing an academy for artists in Seville in 1660; there, students were taught the importance of drawing from life. The ruler and compass suggest he painted according to mathematical laws of perspective and proportion. The blobs of paint on the palette are built up to look three-dimensional, adding to the illusion that it shares our space -- like the framed Murillo, who seems to have just put it down.

The Latin inscription explains that Murillo painted himself 'to fulfil the wishes and prayers of his children'. By the time this picture was painted only four of his nine children were still alive -- among them his son Gaspar, who may have owned this self portrait. In 1682, the year of Murillo's death, the artist's friend and patron, the Flemish silk merchant Nicolás Omazur, ordered an engraving to be made after this self portrait in Brussels; it soon became the best-known image of the artist.

Our self portrait was one of the first paintings by Murillo to arrive in England in the early eighteenth century, and may have inspired the British painter William Hogarth to make significant changes to his own self portrait, The Painter and his Pug (Tate Gallery, London), after seeing it in the collection of the Prince of Wales.

This is one of only two known self portraits by Murillo. The other, now in the Frick Collection, New York, shows the artist in his thirties and was owned by his son Gaspar.

Style: Baroque
This pinnacle panel comes from the uppermost part of a large multi-panelled altarpiece painted for the church of Santa Croce, Florence. There were originally six of these, four of which survive. Two others are in our collection, showing King David and Isaiah; one, showing the prophet Daniel, in the Philip G. Johnson collection in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The figure is Moses who, according to the Old Testament book of Exodus, was chosen by God to lead the Israelites out of captivity in Egypt. An inscription at shoulder level on either side of his body identifies him -- it is an adaptation of words from the book of Exodus: 'I saw that the bush was burning and was not consumed' (Exodus 3: 2). The burning bush, through which God spoke to Moses, later came to be associated with the Virgin Mary's everlasting virginity. The inscription, which refers to the divine nature of Christ's conception, is in keeping with those on the scrolls in other panels -- like the ones held by David and Isaiah, which also feature prophecies about Christ's birth.

As with the other pinnacle panels in the collection, there are holes in the areas to either side of the pointed arch for decorative framing elements to be slotted in.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
In this painting, we look east down the boulevard de Port-Royal from a position near the Paris Observatory. In the 1870s Johan Barthold Jongkind produced several views of this boulevard, which was near his studio in the rue de Chevreuse in Montparnasse. He often made drawings and watercolour sketches of a scene which he would then use in his studio as the basis for his oil paintings; this picture relates to a watercolour of 1874.

Although he was born in Latrop in Holland, Jongkind spent most of his career in Paris. When he first arrived in the French capital he worked in the studios of Eugène Isabey, a marine painter, and François-Édouard Picot, who predominantly painted mythological, religious and historical subjects. Jongkind developed a style of painting that influenced the young Impressionists, including Alfred Sisley, Eugène Boudin and Monet, who said it was to Jongkind that he owed 'the final education of my eye'.

This picture shows the technique Jongkind used in his late work: very loose brushwork applied in a spontaneous and sketch-like way, emulating drawing rather than oil painting. Stippled brushstrokes make up the trees, while sweeping ones describe the clouds as they move in the wind. The sky dominates the composition, stretching across the horizontal canvas. He has used a muted colour palette and the unusual technique of outlining details with black, which is especially prominent in his depiction of the streetlamps and the definition of the buildings on the right. A thick black line defines either side of the street, accentuating the slight rise in the road and drawing our focus to the vanishing point on the horizon, where the smoking chimneys of the city are visible in the distance. The details on the road to the left of the composition are more abstract, with black lines used to give the impression of rubbish in the road, just ahead of a horse-drawn carriage.

Style: Impressionist
This is one of a pair of paintings depicting views of the valley of the River Dee from opposite viewpoints near the village of Holt in Cheshire. The other is The Valley of the Dee with Chester in the Distance. They are landscapes painted in the spirit of the French neoclassical landscape painter, Claude, who depicted views of the countryside outside Rome, rather than accurate depictions of real views in Cheshire. The foreground is invented, and the general character of the scene has been changed.

The view is of Holt Bridge, spanning the River Dee, at the point where the river serves as a border between Wales and England. The fourteenth-century Holt Bridge still survives, although its gatehouse, part ruined in Wilson’s day, has since crumbled. The small village of Holt is on the left of the picture, in the Welsh country of Denbighshire; the larger village of Farndon, in the English county of Cheshire, is on the right. Wilson has set the square tower of Farndon’s church on top of cliffs, but these are in fact sandstone rocks, and Wilson has exaggerated their height. By doing this, he has given the church a dramatic position like the ruined tower on a cliff in his The Destruction of the Children of Niobe (Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, USA). He had exhibited this scene from Ovid's Metamorphoses two years earlier, in 1760, and it was arguably the key picture of his career.

Three figures are grouped in the foreground in the shade of a graceful tree. A young man plays a flute, while a reclining woman shades her eyes and gazes up towards the sun; the youth beside her looks in the same direction. Whatever they are looking at is outside the picture space, so it is impossible for us to know what has caught their attention. The head of another man appears behind them over the brow of the hill. He carries a long pole or perhaps a sword over his shoulder. It is not clear who he is in relation to the other figures. Maybe he is the herdsman for the flock of sheep below.

Wilson made a preliminary chalk drawing of the scene now in Birmingham City Art Gallery, which is closely followed in the painting. However the figures in the drawing are a woman and a child, who appears to be gathering firewood. Wilson decided to replace them in the oil painting with the more poetic and mysterious group who are making music -- often in art a euphemism for lovemaking -- and are dazzled by the sun.

The painting was probably exhibited at the Society of Artists in 1762.

Style: Academic, Neoclassical, Georgian
The 12 small pictures in this group show the 'labours of the months' -- the activities that take place each month throughout the farming year. They were painted on canvas and then each glued to a wooden panel. It is possible that they were made to decorate the recessed panels of a pair of doors. The paintings seem to have been planned in pairs with the figures facing each other and are currently displayed in two frames in groups of six.

A bearded man wearing a yellow tunic trims vines that have been trained to grow up two trees. The branches of the vine are bare, while the trees have a few brownish leaves. Pruning vines is an activity carried out in Italy in winter, when the plant is dormant, and in spring when the new leaves have started to grow.

Style: High Renaissance
Boudin was born in Honfleur, the son of a ship's captain, and always preferred to paint seaside subjects, specialising in those which showed the Normandy coast. The centre of his early activities was Le Havre, where he opened a framing shop that was visited by painters, including Jean-Francois Millet, who encouraged him to take up painting. Although he started off painting seascapes, he found a niche in the 1860s producing beach scenes. These showed well-to-do holidaymakers from Paris and abroad who arrived at the fast developing resorts of Trouville and Deauville to sample the health-giving benefits of seabathing and the vibrant social life. He produced a few hundred of these paintings, which have come to define his reputation, something he himself foresaw when he wrote: 'I shall do something else, but I shall always be a painter of beach scenes.’

Boudin’s pictures were distinctly modern in their subject matter, and drew admiration from his more forward-thinking contemporaries. He reflected in a letter of 1868: ' I have been congratulated for daring to include things and people of our own time in my pictures, for having found a way of making acceptable men in overcoats and women in waterproofs …This attempt isn't new, for the Italians and Flemish painted the people of their own times …' He continued: 'The peasants have their favourite painters: Millet, Jacque, Breton, and that's fine…But don't these bourgeois, who stroll on the jetty towards the sunset, have the right to be fixed on canvas, to be brought to the light? Between ourselves, they are often resting from hard toil, these men who emerge from their offices and their studies.’

This painting is typical of Boudin’s many sketches of beaches in showing groups of people ranged along the beach in a frieze-like composition, the whites, reds and blues of their costumes standing out against the silvery greys of the sea and sky. Two other similar paintings of holidaymakers on the beach, Beach Scene, Trouville, probably painted in the 1860s, and Beach Scene, Trouville, probably painted 1870--4, are in the National Gallery’s collection, as well as a much later scene of an almost empty beach in a gale .

Style: Impressionist
A sandy path runs down the middle of a rocky barren ravine. This view, with its high horizon and full-frontal close-up depiction of the path and rocks, is particularly original. The location is probably that of Les Sables du Jean-de-Paris, a sandy hillside topped with boulders and trees within the Gorges d’Apremont, in the Forest of Fontainebleau. It was one of the areas particularly favoured by Rousseau, who painted a number of views in the vicinity. Furthermore, it was one of the four areas included in his petition submitted in 1852 to Emperor Napoleon III asking for the forest to be protected from further tree-felling, particularly oaks.

Other painters associated with the Barbizon School, including Diaz, also painted in the area, but none of his views quite match this  composition for its audacity. Rousseau’s paint handling is also bold. The central path and rocks to either side are finished in heavy grey and cream paint, thickly applied with a dry brush and possibly a palette knife, resulting in a highly textured and fragmented surface.

Style: Barbizon
The 12 small pictures in this group show the 'labours of the months' -- the activities that take place each month throughout the farming year. They were painted on canvas and then each glued to a wooden panel. It is possible that they were made to decorate the recessed panels of a pair of doors. The paintings seem to have been planned in pairs with the figures facing each other and are currently displayed in two frames in groups of six.

This is the most puzzling picture of the series. A young man holds two rods, with one crossing the other at the top. It looks as though he might be making a supporting frame for vegetables or fruit, but there is a tradition in Italy for one of the spring months to be represented by a youth holding crossed branches, often in bud, and this may be what we see here.

The man wears a straw hat and is barefoot, suggesting that this is one of the warmer months, possibly May. He probably would have faced the barefoot young man who has cut a sheaf of corn with his scythe, in the picture we think may represent June.

Style: High Renaissance
This is one of the earliest paintings in our collection. It was probably made in Siena in a decade when devotion to the Virgin Mary was at its height in the city, after she was credited with protecting its citizens against the Florentines in battle.

Its small size suggests it was made for private prayer, but it is very similar to some of the large-scale pictures of the Virgin that were being created in Siena to honour her at around the same time. One of these was the image known as the Madonna del Bordone by the Sienese painter Coppo di Marcovaldo. There, as here, the Virgin wears a large white veil and cradles the Christ Child with a white cloth. These details are deliberate references to paintings of the Virgin and Child from the Byzantine tradition. The pose of the figures also brings these Byzantine icons to mind. For example, there was a particular type of image of the Virgin and the baby Christ pressing their cheeks together tenderly known as the glykophilousa meaning 'sweetly kissing', which is adapted slightly here. This intimacy creates a tender image of motherhood ideal for an image for private contemplation.

The surrounding images tell the story of the redemption of man through Christ’s conception by the Holy Ghost  and his death. It begins in fact in the two small figures of the Angel Gabriel (on the left) and the Virgin (on the right) that seem to hover above the central image. They represent the Annunciation -- the moment that the Virgin Mary conceived Christ by the Holy Ghost upon hearing Gabriel's words. This scene has been connected to a badly damaged fresco which dates to around the same period. It was discovered in the crypt of the cathedral in Siena in 2003, providing further evidence that the panel was made in that city.

The scene of the Crucifixion above this is almost identical to the Crucifixion scene shown in the crypt. In both images the Virgin Mary is shown swooning in grief supported by two women. On the right hand side of the Cross is Saint John the Evangelist, who is described as being present in the Gospels. Next to him is the Roman centurion who, according to Luke's Gospel, declared his faith in Christ at his Crucifixion.

We also see groups of figures in the spandrels, the spaces on either side of the framing arch: those on the left are invited by the angel blowing a trumpet to ascend to heaven. They include a bishop and two friars -- one in the brown habit of the Franciscans (the followers of Saint Francis). Like the centurion, they are believers. Those on the right, on the other hand, are the damned who are prevented from entering. Although this part of the painting is quite damaged we can see them covering their faces with their hands.

The entire composition may be drawn from a Byzantine icon as it is very unusual in Sienese painting. It is possible that it was the central panel of a triptych. The presence of Franciscans among the blessed suggests that it was made for a Franciscan friar.

Style: Gothic
This panel once formed the left shutter of an altarpiece in the Benedictine abbey at Liesborn in north-west Germany. The right-hand shutter, which shows Saints Gregory, Maurice and Augustine, is also in the National Gallery's collection.

Saints Ambrose, Exuperius and Jerome are shown here beneath a vaulted Gothic ceiling, its structure is defined by red articulating ribs. It is probably intended to resemble a church interior. Saint Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, appears on the left in liturgical dress, including a mitre (hat) and a crosier which, as it resembles a shepherd's crook, symbolises his role as shepherd of Christians. Saint Exuperius is shown in armour, a reference to his role in the Theban legion of the Roman army; its members  all converted to Christianity in the fourth century. They were led by Saint Maurice, who appears in the centre of the opposite shutter. Saint Jerome stands with the lion that, according to legend, became his companion after he removed a thorn from its paw.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
The Pharisees (chief priests) and scribes are recorded in the Gospels as the opponents of Christ. They ask Christ whether it is right to pay tax to the Romans, who rule Palestine. Christ, sensing the trap, asks whose likeness and name are on the coinage: 'They say unto him, Caesar's. Then he saith unto them, render therefore unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's' (Matthew 22; Mark 12; Luke 20).

Titian has painted the Pharisee in the foreground offering the golden coin to Christ, and a scribe wearing spectacles behind him. The subject is rare in art. Titian may have been the first artist to represent it in his famous painting of about 1516 for Duke Alfonso I d'Este of Ferrara (now in the Gemäldegalerie, Dresden), which has a broadly similar arrangement. The National Gallery's picture is almost certainly the painting that Titian described in October 1568 as recently completed and sent to King Philip II of Spain. Titian's letter suggests that he painted this picture with the King in mind, although he may have chosen the subject himself, as he almost always did in paintings for him. For 200 years it hung in the Sacristy at Philip's royal residence and monastery of El Escorial.

X-ray images reveal that Titian made many changes to the picture during painting, particularly to the Pharisee and his clothing, Christ's head and the coin. The strips of canvas at the left and bottom of the picture were probably added by him rather than at a later date.The painting was worked on over a long period. In its original conception, with its powerful contrasts of characterisation and texture, strong gestures and lighting, it recalls Titian's Ecce Homo (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), which was completed in 1543.

The painting is in good condition but colour changes and the deterioration of earlier restorations now affect its appearance. The shadows in the folds of Christ's blue cloak have blanched, altering our sense of its form; the upper part of Christ's arm no longer appears to project from his body. The distracting dash of white in the drapery beside the thumb of Christ's raised hand must have once been less bright -- a red lake glaze painted over it may have faded. The Pharisee's scarf contains red pigments and must originally have been purple in colour, but the blue pigment used for it, smalt, has turned brown over time.

Style: High Renaissance
This is one of three imaginary seaport paintings by Claude owned by the National Gallery, and one that tells a story: the sorry tale of Saint Ursula. According to the thirteenth-century Golden Legend, Ursula, a Christian princess from Britain or Brittany, made a holy pilgrimage to Rome with 11,000 virgins.

In this painting, Ursula, dressed in yellow and holding a flag with her emblem, watches her companions embark on their return voyage. They carry bows and arrows, weapons that represent their martyrdom. Later in the story, Ursula and her companions stop at Cologne in Germany, where the companions are all killed by the invading Huns, a nomadic race from Central Asia who conquered much of Europe in the fourth century. When Ursula refuses to marry the leader of the Huns she is shot with an arrow and dies.

The viewer's gaze is directed towards Ursula and her attendants by the bows of the ships on the right, which point across the painting, and two aristocratic figures in the bottom left corner who witness the spectacle. The balance between the soft, hazy light, the sun low in the sky, and calm sea is typical of Claude’s seascapes, as are the highly detailed buildings, trees and ships, which are intended to frame the scene. Claude spent most of his life in Rome: the circular building with columns in the left foreground is based on the Tempietto di San Pietro in Montorio, a temple built on the spot of Saint Peter's crucifixion.

This work was painted in 1641 for Fausto Poll (1581--1652), shortly before he became a cardinal. The position was granted to him by Pope Urban VIII (1568--1644), one of Claude's most influential patrons. The palace building positioned slightly further back on the left resembles the Palazzo Cancellaria, the residence of the Pope's nephew, Cardinal Francesco Barberini (1597--1679). The emblem of the Barberini family can be seen on the blue flags of the ships placed in the centre, which are being admired by two figures in the middle distance. The Barberini family wielded immense power and influence in seventeenth-century Rome. They were avid collectors of paintings and patrons of Claude.

This story was rarely painted in the seventeenth century but was a popular subject during the sixteenth century. Caravaggio’s  Martyrdom of Saint Ursula, now in the Palazzo Zevallos Stigliano, Naples, shows Ursula with an arrow impaled in her chest and surrounded by the Hun soldiers. The authenticity of her legend was questioned during the twentieth century resulting in her feast of 21 October being removed from the Roman Catholic Liturgical Calendar.

This work, along with several others by Claude, was among the first to be bought by the Gallery in 1824, from the prestigious collection of John Julius Angerstein (1735--1823).

Style: Baroque, Academic