wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
The Virgin Mary kneels in adoration before her son, Christ, who lies on his back in the hay in a manger. Behind her are two men in ragged clothes. This is the Adoration of the Shepherds, described in Gospel of Luke (2: 8--18).

The Gospel tells how an an angel appeared to shepherds one night and announced the birth of the Messiah. They were watching their flocks in the hills around Bethlehem, but hurried to the city and found Mary, her husband Joseph, and the child in a manger, as the angel had told them. The walled city in the background of this picture is presumably Bethlehem. Joseph, huddled in a yellow cloak, looks slightly despondent, and sits with his back against the wall. Beside him, a small waterskin and a round object, perhaps a flask, hang from a peg.

This small panel is one of a series that shows events from the life of Christ, painted by Bernardino Butinone probably in the early 1480s. Around 13 survive in various collections; others are lost. They perhaps came from a large multi-panelled altarpiece which possibly involved sculpture, such as were fashionable in Lombardy.

Rather than the classical ruins used for the stable by other Renaissance artists -- for example in The Adoration of the Kings -- here the holy family shelter in a convincing, if rather ramshackle, barn with an open front. The walls are made of broad vertical planks held in place by rough branches, behind which hay has been stuffed, perhaps as insulation. The infant Christ wears a small black cap, sometimes seen in Paduan and Venetian paintings, and lies in a kind of pen made of wattle.

Style: Early Renaissance
The shadowy dome of St Paul’s Cathedral is viewed from  the south bank of the Thames. In the immediate foreground is a row of tethered barges; the river beyond is dotted with boats, including a  passenger paddle steamer which belches out smoke. Just to the front of the cathedral the newly built Blackfriars Bridge (completed in 1869) straddles the river; behind it a train, invisible but for its plume of smoke, passes over Blackfriars Railway Bridge. At the far left are the gas holders of the City of London Gasworks, which were removed at the end of the 1870s. Apart from the foreground barges, everything is shrouded in the smog for which London was famous in the nineteenth century. The sky is leaden and heavily painted in creams, beiges, greys and dirty pinks. Smoke coming from the train, the chimney on the left and the boats on the river appears to mingle with the clouds.

Daubigny painted this view on his third, final and longest visit to London. He had previously visited the city for a week in July 1865, and also in 1866. He arrived in October 1870, a refugee from the Franco-Prussian War, and stayed until May 1871. Fellow artists Pissarro and Monet were also sheltering in the city and, according to one version of a famous story, Daubigny came across Monet working on the banks of the Thames. He was perhaps painting his view of the Houses of Parliament.

This unrelentingly urban view is unusual in Daubigny’s work. During his first two visits to London he painted the more rural reaches of the Thames out at Erith in Kent. His numerous views of rivers in France, particularly the Oise and the Seine, are also first and foremost landscapes, in which he stressed their rural nature and ignored the increasingly common sight of paddle steamers. It was perhaps the foggy atmosphere of London that influenced  his choice of subject here. The smog made a great impression on him during this visit. In October 1870, when he had just arrived, he had to stop writing a letter at eleven o’clock in the morning to light a candle: ‘So much for the climate. Fog! Visibility less than two paces’.

The painting is dated 1873, after Daubigny’s return to France. It is likely that he started the work in London in 1870 or 1871, and finished it back in France, at which point he signed and dated it. While many  areas of the painting have been painted wet-in-wet  the sky appears to have been completed in two distinct stages.

Style: Barbizon
It has been suggested that this picture shows Attila driving Beauty, Art and Pleasure before him. Attila, who is often known as Attila the Hun, was ruler of the Huns, a nomadic people who lived in Central Asia, the Caucasus and Eastern Europe between the fourth and sixth centuries AD. The Hunnic Empire reached its peak in the mid-sixth century under his rule.

The painting was formerly attributed to the French Romantic painter Eugène Delacroix, in part because of the mural Attila Tramples Italy and the Arts he painted in the half-dome of the Library of the Chamber of Deputies at the Palais Bourbon, Paris. In the mural, the barbarian Attila is the counterpart of the civilising figure of Orpheus. However, An Allegory has a false signature by Delacroix, and is not now thought to be by him.

The picture was severely damaged in a flood at the Tate Gallery in 1928, and much of it is covered by paper to hold the paint in place. Black-and-white photographs taken before the flood damage provide a record of the original composition.

Style: Realist, Neoclassical
The man in this portrait is mistakenly identified on the reverse as Ulrich I Cirksena, Count of East Friesland, who died in 1466. However, he looks more like Ulrich's son, Edzard I, known as 'the Great', who became count in 1492. His sword is inscribed with a Latin motto: 'Victor est qvi in / nomen domini pvgnavit' ('the victor is he who has fought in the name of the Lord'). The badge on his hat features an eagle, which was part of the coat of arms of the region.

Dendrochronology has revealed that the wooden panel could not have been be used as a support for painting until about 1704; pigment analysis also shows the use of a colour only invented in the early eighteenth century. These tests confirm that the picture was not made from life but is either a copy or version of an earlier portrait. The Cirksena dynasty died out in the mid-eighteenth century, which may have prompted renewed interest in the family.

Style: Baroque, Neoclassical
This is one of two paintings originally commissioned as a pair by Stanislas Augustus, King of Poland, in June or July 1772. However, concerned that the King was slow to pay, Vernet instead sold the pictures to the British officer and East India Company official Lord Clive (known as Clive of India).

'Calme', which Vernet painted first, shows an imaginary harbour as fishermen return with their catch on a tranquil summer's evening. The golden setting sun is at the centre of the painting above the misty horizon, its light illuminating the undersides of the clouds and reflecting off the ripples on the calm sea. At the entrance to the port is a lighthouse and some fortifications; a classical temple stands on the left-hand shore at the foot of a high wooded mountain. A ship has just arrived -- it is just possible to make out the tiny figures on its mast yards furling the sails -- and is being towed by two launches into the harbour.

In his letter to Clive's agent, the English banker Henry Hoare, Vernet wrote about this painting: the 'foreground is bedecked with numerous figures: fishermen unloading their catch from a boat, women waiting to get hold of them; a fisherman with a rod with his wife sitting next to him make a contrast to the sun's disc, which is striking; overall this picture has a rich, harmonious composition.'

Light, shadow and atmosphere are the true subjects of Vernet’s painting, the figures in the foreground merely a foil to the hazy meeting of water, light and air. The painting follows in the tradition of the Italianate seaport paintings of Claude such as A Seaport of 1664, and Seaport with the Embarkation of Saint Ursula of 1641. In the pendant painting, 'Tempête' ('Storm'), Vernet explores contrasts of light and extremes of weather.

Vernet’s landscapes and seascapes and the effects of weather were perceived as true to nature, and the ships in his marine views were based on careful observation. The nearest ship seen here is a two-decker of 50 guns with a correct build for the 1770s, probably a warship since it is flying a long naval style pennant, an exaggeratedly long Dutch flag, and possibly an East Indiaman.

Vernet's paired seascapes were intended to have an emotional effect on their viewers, the serene beauty of  'Calme' contrasting with the sublime horror of 'Tempête'. He was exploring fashionable ideas expressed in Edmund Burke’s A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (1757; first French edition 1765) -- a text that had a significant influence on the Romantic and Gothick movements in European art and literature.

These are two of Vernet's greatest marine paintings and the type of work for which he was most famous in his day. They are the only great pair of marine views by him in a British public collection.

Style: Romantic
Scenes of villagers and townspeople amusing themselves on the region’s frozen lakes and canals have a long tradition in the art of the Low Countries, going right back to the work of the Flemish artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder in the mid-sixteenth century. This painting was made about 250 years later by the landscape specialist Andries Vermeulen, who was born in Dordrecht but worked for some time in Amsterdam, where he died.

It is based on the style of winter landscapes which were produced in seventeenth-century Holland, first by Hendrick Avercamp and, more particularly in this case, by Isack van Ostade. Brightly lit and dominated by the finery of the horse-drawn sleigh and its ruddy-faced occupants, this is a light-hearted work, though there are some ominous-looking cracks developing in the ice. A similar work by the artist (now in the Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt) is signed and dated 1800.

Style: Neoclassical
An old man writes by the glow of a candle; it appears to be the only source of light in the darkened room.  A collection of framed prints and drawings crowded on the wall is barely visible. Wide cracks caused by paint shrinkage run across the canvas, revealing the white ground and making the details of the composition hard to decipher.

Jean Charles Joseph Drucker, the previous owner of the painting, referred to it as ‘The Philosopher’. The title might be the one given by Jozef Israëls, who was a friend of Drucker. The artist has drawn on a long tradition in Dutch art of depicting scholars in their studies. The subtle light effects are reminiscent of Rembrandt, an artist Israëls greatly admired and with whom he was often compared by critics. This was among the first works by a contemporary Dutch artist to be shown at the National Gallery.

Style: Realist
This small picture is crowded with figures arranged within a triangular composition. The Virgin Mary clasps two small children -- Christ and John the Baptist -- to her lap. Saint Elizabeth, Mary's cousin and the Baptist's mother, kneels beside her. In shadow, behind the brightly lit group in the foreground, are Saint Joseph and angels. Joseph's head is awkwardly positioned and the women's poses are stiff rather than graceful. Although the characters in this scene are from the Bible, the meeting between the two families isn't recorded there.

An infrared photograph of the painting reveals that the artist changed his mind about the composition: he painted out the head of a donkey behind Elizabeth and another person beside Joseph. The boy in the centre of the picture is only faintly indicated, and perhaps belongs to an earlier original composition. Just visible to the naked eye are several faint lines in the bottom left corner which could be rocks or fragments of ruins. Many areas of Baugin's picture have been thinly painted. Its sketchy, unfinished appearance is partly due to worn areas of paint, as can be seen the faded colour of the Virgin's red sleeve and the angel's wings. There has been little attempt to create perspective in certain areas, such as the trees, which are painted using single lines and dashes of paint. However, the blue of the mountains reflects the way that distance appears to distort the appearance of colours.

Baugin spent most of his career in Paris but was in Italy from 1636 to 1640, and was greatly influenced by Italian painting. The composition, appearance of the figures and bright palette owe something to the work of Raphael and Parmigianino. For the paintings Baugin produced in Paris he used a grey ground layer of paint. This painting has a white ground, suggesting that it was not painted in France. It is possible that the original composition was started elsewhere, perhaps Italy, and the painting was finished in Paris.

Style: Baroque
The sitter's identity is given in a later inscription at top left as: ‘Le cardinal de Retz’ and confirmed by comparison with engraved portraits by Etienne Picart (1652) and P. van Schuppen (1662).

Jean François-Paul de Gondi (1613--1679) was the second son of Philippe-Emmanuel de Gondi, a general of the galleys of France and the nephew of Henri de Gondi, Archbishop of Paris. He was a leader in the troubles of the Fronde, a series of civil disturbances in France from 1648 to 1653. He was made Cardinal de Retz in 1652 but later that year he was imprisoned by Cardinal Mazarin, the first minister of King Louis XIII.

Cardinal de Retz left France for Spain, then Rome (where he attended the conclave which elected Pope Alexander VII in 1655), Burgundy, Holland, Flanders and England before returning to France after Mazarin’s death in 1662. He also attended the conclaves in Rome which elected Pope Clement IX in 1667, Pope Clement X in 1670, and Pope Innocent XI in 1676. His memoirs, addressed to an anonymous lady who was probably Madame de Sévigné, were first published in 1717.

Given Retz’s apparent age in the portrait -- he looks to be in his late 50s -- he may have been portrayed in Rome during one of the conclaves he attended. Although the conclaves of 1667 and 1676 lasted only a matter of weeks, the conclave of 1670 continued over a period of four months, so this seems the most likely opportunity for Retz to have commissioned a portrait. It was also at this moment that Voet was painting portraits of a number of cardinals in Rome.

Jakob Voet was a Flemish portrait painter who worked in Rome, Paris and Antwerp. Although this painting and Cardinal Carlo Cerri are firmly attributed to Voet, they appear stylistically different. The rapidity of the brushwork of the drapery, the way in which the sitter’s left shoulder is delineated, and Retz’s thoughtful introspective look recall similar qualities in Voet’s Cardinal Alessandro Crescenzi (formerly Heim Gallery, London) and Cardinal Decio Azzolini (Staatliche Museum, Berlin).

Style: Baroque, Academic
On 19 October 1813 the Emperor Napoleon was defeated at the Battle of Leipzig, which was his first decisive military defeat. Lasting three days, the battle was also one of the bloodiest of the Napoleonic Wars and the French army suffered huge casualities. Forced to withdraw west of the Rhine, Napoleon planned to retreat to France. As the French withdrew, they met a force of Austro-Bavarian troops, under the command of Karl Philipp von Wrede, on 30 October at the town of Hanau, near Frankfurt. Wrede’s aim was to block Napoleon’s line of retreat. Despite their previous heavy losses and having less than half the men and cannons available to Wrede, the French, under the personal command of Napoleon, pushed back Wrede’s troops and captured Hanau. This victory gave them access to the main road to Frankfurt, where they arrived on 31 October, just 20 miles from the safety of their rear base at Mainz. The battle was one of Napoleon's final victories before the invasion of France.

This painting is the third one in the group of four battle scenes that Vernet painted for the duc d'Orléans and for which he was paid 10,000 francs. Although the duke did not fight at Hanau, he benefited politically from references to Napoleon and memories of imperial victory. In the picture we see French grenadiers of the Grand Battery, wearing blue uniforms, defend their artillery against a charge by Bavarian cavalry, who are wearing white. The Grand Battery is under the command of General Antoine Drouot, who stands beside a firing canon, to the right of the painting, as a mounted Austrian cavalryman tries to strike him down. On the left, the French Guard cavalry are counter charging. They are led by General Nansouty, who is shown centre-left seated on a chestnut horse with his back towards us.

As in the other pictures in the group, Vernet gives us a panoramic view full of activity that also shows how the battle was fought. He places us on the edge of the forest as Drouot moves his cannons towards the open plain to rebuff the advancing Bavarian troops. Alternating bands of light and shadow lead our eye across the landscape towards the river Kinsig in the distance, which is crossed by a stone bridge. Behind the river, are the bell towers of Hanau. Vernet makes the action of the battle itself more accessible by focusing on individual scenes or episodes in the foreground, each filled with drama and sharp incidental detail -- for example, if you look closely, you can see where he has shown the trajectory of a cannon ball as it has clipped some trees on the right. Trees frame the central vista, which contains the action. Smoke that merges with the clouds reinforces this framing effect.

Style: Romantic
This portrait was purchased in 1855 from the Venetian Capello family, and is said to represent Pellegrina Morosini, from one of the oldest and most important families of sixteenth-century Venice. Pellegrina married Bartolomeo Capello in 1544 and had two children, Bianca and Vettor. She died some time before 1559.

Pellegrina's daughter, Bianca Capello, was the subject of much scandal during and after her lifetime. She was abducted from Venice by a Florentine merchant and married at the age of 15, shaming her family. Shortly afterwards, she became the mistress of Francesco I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, who married her immediately after the death of his wife. In 1579 there was a state wedding and Bianca Capello became Grand Duchess of Tuscany, which brought glory and political advantage to the Capello family.

The sitter is portrayed as a confident and wealthy woman approaching 30 years old. She turns her eyes to meet ours with a direct, questioning look. Her gown is made of black velvet, although the very yellow varnish covering the blue pigment in the black paint now makes the dress appear green.

She wears a very long and expensive necklace of about 90 pearls -- 74 of which are visible. It loops around the collar of her lace cape, which is tucked into her dress at the shoulders and would have reached to a point at the back of her waist. The lace was probably made by a member of the woman's household and is very simply painted with criss-cross patterns of white lines on top of the flesh tones and black fabric below. The white brushstrokes have smudged at the corners of her bodice where the paint beneath was still wet. The sleeves of her dress are detachable, as was usual at the time, and her white linen undershirt puffs out between the joins.

The cap on the back of the woman's head now looks very like her own blonde curly hair, but originally it may have been a pale pink. Her blonde curls are painted with soft brushstrokes into wet paint and her lips and skin are shaded with tiny hatched lines. Much of the oil-rich surface of the painting has cracked, especially on the face.

The two stone ledges in an apparently random arrangement on which the sitter here rests her hands are an unusual feature. The portrait similar in appearance and technique to two portraits of women (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna and the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest) considered to be works by Tintoretto from early in his career. The pose of the arms, robustness and facial type of the sitter, the sketchy gossamer painting of the lace -- the way in which it has smudged where painted wet-in-wet onto the black dress -- and the lightning-like white highlights on the velvet sleeves are reminiscent of effects in Tintoretto's Vienna Portrait of a Young Woman. It was probably painted by a follower of Tintoretto, perhaps from the mainland, in the early 1550s.

Style: High Renaissance
A dark-haired, rather fleshy young man with a prominent nose and a distinct five o'clock shadow on his chin, jowls and upper lip is shown in an interior. To his left, a window opens onto a hilly landscape with a walled city on the shore of a lake, under a cloudy sky. We don't know who he was, but he appears to be in his twenties and wears the cap, mantle and stole worn by Venetian citizens and aristocrats (also seen in A Man with a Pink by Andrea Solario).

The style of the painting, with the sitter depicted close up and strongly lit, shows the impact of one of the greatest Italian portraitists,  Antonello da Messina on Venetian painting. Portrait of a Man is one of the most accomplished of Messina's surviving portraits, and shows how he had absorbed developments in Netherlandish portraiture of the fifteenth century, as seen in Jan van Eyck's Portrait of a Man (Self Portrait?) and Robert Campin's A Man. Netherlandish painting was greatly admired in northern Italy, and under its influence late fifteenth-century artists moved away from the earlier tradition of profile portraits -- such as Alesso Baldovinetti's Portrait of a Lady -- to a more naturalistic way of depicting their sitters.

Here the artist has modernised Messina's tradition by including the window with the landscape, an idea also taken from Netherlandish painting, as seen in Portrait of a Man (Jan van Winckele?) by Dirk Bouts.

Style: High Renaissance