wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
According to the Gospel of Matthew, Saint John the Baptist lived in the wilderness as a young man, surviving only on locusts and wild honey, and wearing a camel-hair tunic. He spent his time baptising the people of Judea in the River Jordan and preaching the coming of Christ. Murillo rarely painted Saint John as a young man, as we see here, more often depicting him as a child accompanied by a lamb.

Saint John holds a reed cross, one of his attributes, with a scroll coiled around the top. It bears the Latin inscription 'Ecce Agnus Dei' (‘Behold the Lamb of God’) -- words apparently spoken by John just before he baptised Christ, recognising him as the son of God (John 1: 29--34). The connection between Christ and the lamb is made again in descriptions of Christ's crucifixion, which happened during the Jewish festival of Passover. According to the Gospels, Christ was led to his death -- laying down his life to atone for humanity’s sins -- at the same time as lambs were being sacrificed for Passover.

The saint is visibly perturbed: he is transfixed, his eyes wide and directed towards heaven. One hand is drawn gently to his chest as he recalls his encounter with Christ. His slightly foreshortened face and upper body are bathed in divine light. The subdued colouring of the saint's skin tones and the landscape contrast with the golden light emanating from a break in the clouds and John's bright red drapery. The crop of the composition -- just below John's knees -- is unusual, but there is no physical evidence to suggest that the painting was originally larger and cut down at some point.

The painting arrived in England, from Spain, in the early 1780s and achieved considerable fame. It was particularly admired by Thomas Gainsborough, who bought it in 1787, a year before he died. In 1924, the National Gallery acquired it as a work by Murillo, but doubts concerning the attribution were later raised. Conservation and cleaning in 1980--1 revealed the painting's high quality, particularly noticeable in the saint’s face and hands. It is now widely accepted that Murillo painted it.

Style: Baroque
This is a scene from a famous story in the Old Testament of the Bible. At the centre of the painting sits a naked woman, the curves of her body highlighted by the low, dramatic light shining from the left. She is Bathsheba, the wife of a soldier named Uriah. She has just finished bathing and is now lolling on a bench while considering how to dress herself. One hand toys with her curly hair, while the other reaches for the jewel box presented to her by her maid. Three more attendants proffer ribbons for her hair, and all eyes are fixed on her reaction.

But it isn’t only her maids who are focused so intently on their mistress. In the shadows at the top right of the picture another figure is looking down at the scene from the roof of a high building. This is King David. As a boy he had killed the giant Goliath armed only with a sling, and had gone on to conquer Jerusalem and become King of Israel.

David already had several wives, but this painting illustrates the infamous moment when he was walking on his palace roof in Jerusalem and spotted Bathsheba bathing. He was so taken by her beauty that he ordered Bathsheba to come to him and seduced her. A single seduction wasn’t enough, however. David became so besotted that he devised a plan to get rid of Uriah, ordering him into the forefront 'of the hottest battle' (2 Samuel 11: 15). Inevitably Uriah was killed, and David married Bathsheba who was, by then, pregnant by him. But, as the Bible puts it -- and perhaps not surprisingly -- 'the thing that David had done displeased the Lord' (2 Samuel 11: 27). God intervened and ensured that their first son fell ill and died. Nevertheless, Bathsheba soon became pregnant again and had another son, Solomon, whom David nominated as his successor.

Bathsheba has long been seen as a complicated figure. She was seduced and her husband effectively murdered, but she became the wife of one of the great kings of the Old Testament and the mother of another. She was also an unwitting temptress, and as such was a popular figure in art history. It seems to be this aspect of her story which appealed to the artist here. She provided a good excuse for a picture -- thinly disguised as a religious painting -- that depicts a voluptuous nude in an unguarded moment.



It is not known who made this painting. Although the style and palette are somewhat reminiscent of the seventeenth-century Neapolitan painter Giordano, it is more likely to be by an imitator working after the artist’s death, perhaps during the eighteenth century and possibly in Rome rather than Naples.

Style: Baroque, Academic
Three small boats head up river, towards the rising sun. Their taut, curved sails are outlined against a cool, luminous sky as they lean with the wind. Moving clouds reveal a patch of intense blue that is reflected silvery grey on the translucent water below.

Van Ruysdael’s poetic vision of the three thrusting sails seems to turn the journey through a flat, prosaic Dutch landscape into an epic voyage, like those of the great merchant ships of the time. The boats are kaags, small flat-bottomed vessels intended for inshore sailing. They often carried goods but were also sometimes used as ferryboats, as these are. People are packed in tightly on the three craft.  They are bundled up warmly against the chill but would have been well used to travelling on the water, the main means of transport in seventeenth-century Holland.

Cattle wade up to their knees by the far bank, with a single white animal picked out in the growing light. Close to us, the corks of the dragnet held by a fisherman in a rowing boat midstream bob on the water. The curving net is attached to the side of the vessel beached on the grassy slip of land on the right; van Ruysdael’s signature is just discernible on one of its wooden slats. Its lone fisherman is surrounded by huge woven containers ready to take their catch. One basket already floats in the river to keep the fish alive and cool when the sun reaches full height.

Although Deventer is quite a way from the sea, the River Ijssel is wide here. Seen through the early morning mist, the city’s buildings are hazy. A close look reveals that they are painted in some detail, but van Ruysdael has painted them in positions slightly different to those they occupy in reality for the sake of the rhythmic flow of the composition. Among the windmills on the left is the sturdy round tower of the Noordenbergtoren; to the right is the high, triple-tiered tower of the Grote Kerk. Between them, but a little further away, are the twin spires of the Bergh Kerk. Distant white sails cluster at the entrance to the Vischpoorte, where fishing boats once unloaded their catch for market.

Van Ruysdael was one of a group of Dutch artists who, in the early seventeenth century, pioneered the painting of naturalistic scenes with vast skies; like Jan van Goyen and others, he restricted his palette to a range of greens, greys and blues. They depicted what they saw but, at the same time, captured the essence of the Dutch landscape. Van Ruysdael painted mostly river scenes like this one and A River with Fishermen drawing a Net, while van Goyen ventured further, depicting scenes at the coast, like An Estuary with Fishing Boats and Two Frigates.

Style: Baroque
Sir George Beaumont, the National Gallery's first great benefactor, is portrayed here at the age of 50. He was a Tory MP from 1790 to 1796, but retired from politics to pursue his love of poetry and the arts. He was a principal founder of the British Institution in 1805 and one of its governors.

Beaumont built up a relatively small but well-chosen collection of paintings, chiefly by Italian, French and Dutch masters. He was in favour of a 'national gallery' for pictures, and in 1823 told the government he would be ready to give 16 of his paintings to the nation 'whenever the Gallery about to be erected is ready to receive them', on condition that they bought the collection of Sir John Julius Angerstein. In 1824, the National Gallery opened to the public and in 1826 Beaumont's paintings hung there with Angerstein's.

Beaumont had already been portrayed by Joshua Reynolds in 1787 and by Thomas Lawrence in 1793. He repeatedly criticised Hoppner's work, both before and after being portrayed by him, claiming that Hoppner 'lacked the delicate precision of Sir Joshua'. Beaumont had been a friend of Reynolds, whose work he had greatly admired, and this coloured his judgement of most other contemporary artists. He even erected a cenotaph to the memory of Reynolds in the grounds of his home at Coleorton, which was painted by Constable in 1836. Beaumont was kind and encouraging to John Constable, but not to the point of buying any of his work. Beaumont's criticism of Hoppner was particularly damaging to the artist as many of his clients were Beaumont's friends. He was probably persuaded to let Hoppner paint his portrait by his lifelong friend Lord Mulgrave, who was also a collector and patron of the arts -- Hoppner had painted him in or around 1800.

The portrait shows Beaumont dressed in black, with a glimpse of white waistcoat showing above a white stock, against a plain crimson background. He does not make eye contact with us but turns away. Hoppner has used a restricted colour palette of black, white, crimson and pale grey to add to the drama of the portrait. Beaumont's very clear pale eyes echo the grey of his powdered hair.

Mulgrave's first opinion of Hopper's portrait was that he 'did not like the picture' and that it was not a good likeness of Beaumont. He urged Beaumont to sit for Lawrence again. Later Mulgrave changed his mind and Beaumont gave Hoppner permission to have the portrait engraved and published in 1808. Hoppner exhibited the portrait at the Royal Academy in 1809, in the last year of his life. He had completed little recent work due to recurring illness.

In a gesture of friendship, Mulgrave and Beaumont exchanged portraits with each other. In May 1810 Beaumont gave Mulgrave his portrait by Hoppner and Mulgrave presented Beaumont with his own portrait, painted by William Beechey in 1807 (now in the National Portrait Gallery, London).

Style: Academic, Neoclassical, Georgian
Canaletto's sweeping and dramatic view takes in everyday life on the Grand Canal. A stout helmsman stands aboard a finely decorated passenger barge, or burchiello, coming into view to the left. Fishermen draw their nets in the centre, but a boat carrying two women looks like it is about to collide with one of their vessels (the man looking out at us seems not to notice). Gondolas are scattered over the water, and moored to quays here and there; to the bottom right a smartly dressed man and his companions occupy a craft being rowed out of view.

The painting's grand scale -- it's over two metres wide -- is matched by the careful observation of crisp details, light effects and varied textures. Roof tiles shimmer in the low sunlight, as do the delicate ripples and reflections on the water's surface. Detailed brushwork describes the crumbling facades in rich pinks, ochre, pale blue and white, while the shadowed buildings are painted in softer tones and flatter paint.

Across the canal to the left is the imposing church of San Simeone Piccolo with its green copper dome, which still stands today. This impressive structure was rebuilt between 1718 and 1738 by the architect Giovanni Scalfarotto, following the demolition of the former ninth-century church. The church was inaugurated in April 1738 and Canaletto probably painted this view sometime afterwards -- though there's still a workmen’s hut beside the steps. Nearby, women and children gather in front of houses with weathered façades, and several other figures take a look at the new church.

Further along, on the same side as San Simeone Piccolo, we see the Ponte della Croce, also known as the ponte della zirada ('bridge of the turn') because it is where gondoliers competing in the regatta would turn to race towards the finish. Beyond this, with a plain facade, is the church of Santa Croce. The church of Santa Maria di Nazareth, known as the church of the Scalzi or ‘shoeless’ after the barefoot friars who founded it, appears in the foreground to the right. A small group stands outside the Scalzi, watched by a woman in a yellow shawl and -- from the window of a nearby house -- two others.

Today our view along the canal is very different. Santa Croce was demolished in 1810, and its site is now occupied by the Papadopoli Gardens.  The buildings beyond the Scalzi, including the church of Santa Lucia shown here with decaying plaster walls, were demolished in 1861 to make way for the railway station. The foreground is now obscured by the Ponte degli Scalzi, built in 1858.

There are no surviving drawings of this particular scene by Canaletto, but two studies in the Royal Collection at Windsor depict the same stretch of the canal from different viewpoints. The National Gallery also owns paintings of these views by an unknown follower of Canaletto: Upper reaches of the Grand Canal facing Santa Croce shows the church of San Simeone Piccolo from the opposite side, while another depicts a frontal view of the church from across the canal.

Style: Baroque, Rococo
The painter Cornelius Johnson was born in London to Protestant parents who were originally from Cologne. He was probably trained in Holland but returned to London in about 1618. This portrait of an unknown lady was painted in Holland in 1655, 12 years after Johnson left England for the final time. It is inscribed in blue paint on the lower right: Cornelius Jonson./ Van Ceulen./ fecit./ 1655.

The portrait once hung in the Great Drawing Room of Burghley House in Cambridgeshire with three other portraits by Johnson of the 1st Earl of Exeter and his family, suggesting that this lady may also have been a member of the Cecil family.

The black costume she wears was fashionable at the time. The small black cap (tipmuts) has a point over the forehead and the satin gown has broad bands of bobbin lace within the neckline and edging the opulently full turned-back oyster-coloured satin sleeves. However, the gown must have belonged to the artist rather than the lady as it appears in at least five other Johnson portraits between 1649 and 1658. It is worn by ladies of various shapes and ages, suggesting that at this stage of his career (he was 62 in 1655) Jonson painted their faces from life but their clothes from drapery in the studio, perhaps also with the help of assistants.

Other sitters portrayed in the same black dress and in almost the same pose are shown wearing necklaces, pendant earrings, bracelets and bows. Johnson probably charged extra to paint these adornments. The National Gallery's lady has no jewellery, possibly because whoever commissioned her portrait could not afford to pay the extra fee.

The uneven pattern of light and dark patches across the background was not intended by the artist. The background is painted fairly thinly with a paint made from indigo mixed with lead white. It has faded in the upper paint layer and in exposed areas of the background. Later retouchings (repairs to the paint surface) which once would have matched the background now look dark against it. Indigo was a fairly common pigment in draperies in seventeenth-century Dutch pictures and its use here is consistent with Johnson's training in Holland.

Style: Baroque, Stuart
This is a fragment of an altarpiece made for the high altar of the Benedictine abbey at Liesborn. It comes from the central scene, which depicted the Crucifixion; a fragment showing Christ's head is also in our collection. It was common for Crucifixion scenes to include the Virgin Mary mourning her son beneath the Cross. Saint John, usually identified as the Evangelist, is also commonly depicted with her, and he is shown in another fragment in our collection. According to the Gospel of John, Christ entrusted them to care for each other as they stood at the base of the Cross.

It was not uncommon in Westphalian painting to include other saints with the Virgin and John. Mary is shown with two third-century saints, the brothers Cosmas and Damian to whom the altarpiece was dedicated, among other saints. They are richly dressed in fur-trimmed clothing and they hold ointment jars, one ceramic, the other brass -- a reference to their medical expertise. According to their legend they healed many people but did not accept payment for their treatment.

The fluttering cloth in the top right corner is part of Christ's loincloth; below, we see part of Christ's right leg. These partial details were revealed beneath gilding when the picture was cleaned.  They were probably covered up when the altarpiece was dismantled and cut up, as it would have been easier to sell as an individual image with a unified gold background. The discovery confirmed that the fragment's original position was beneath the image of the crucified Christ in the central scene. Decorative punching -- markings in the gold leaf background created using a special tool -- indicate the left edge of the central scene.

This picture was transferred from its original wooden panel to canvas, probably because of damage to the panel.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
The Virgin Mary is seated on a stone bench under a richly jewelled canopy, the infant Christ on her lap. He leans over to the left, his hand raised in a gesture of blessing, and faces a female saint. The jar she holds identifies her as Mary Magdalene: it contains the ointment with which she would embalm Christ's body after his death. Opposite Mary Magdalene stands Saint Catherine of Alexandria, holding a palm branch in her left hand as a symbol of her martyrdom. The Roman Emperor Maxentius had her tortured on a spiked wheel like the one placed in front of her in this painting. The peaceful landscape that opens out behind the balustrade contrasts with the ordeals of both Christ and Saint Catherine.

Circular paintings, also known as tondi, were much sought after in Renaissance Florence. The city's leading painters, among them Sandro Botticelli and Filippino Lippi, specialised in their production; in fact, scholars once believed this painting to be the work of either of these two artists. In most cases, tondi depict the Virgin and Christ Child, sometimes with angels, the young Saint John the Baptist or other saints. Made as a visual aid for prayer, these paintings often decorated the bedrooms of their original owners.

The National Gallery is home to a variety of tondi from the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, such as The Virgin and Child with Saint John and an Angel and The Holy Family with Angels, but this one stands out for its sheer size (128 cm in diameter) and its vibrant colours. We do not know for whom this painting was originally made, but in the early nineteenth century it was in the collection of the Pucci family in Florence, who also commissioned Botticelli's Adoration of the Kings and Antonio and Piero del Pollaiuolo's celebrated altarpiece, The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian.

Raffaellino trained with Filippino Lippi, and assisted him in a celebrated fresco cycle in the Roman church of S. Maria sopra Minerva, for Cardinal Carafa. Following this, he quickly established himself as one of the major painters of altarpieces and devotional paintings in Florence of the first quarter of the sixteenth century. The biographer Giorgio Vasari especially praised Raffaellino's early work, chief among which was his celebrated altarpiece, The Lamentation of Christ (Alte Pinakothek, Munich). Vasari also admired and owned several of Raffaellino's drawings, among them two beautiful studies of hands drawn in silverpoint (British Museum, London). The hands in one of these drawings resemble those of the Virgin in this painting, suggesting that Raffaellino carefully planned his composition. Despite such preparation, he had to adjust several areas, and the changes he made to the position of the Virgin's chin are now visible to the naked eye.

Style: High Renaissance
Two men with mitres -- the tall headdress worn by bishops and senior abbots -- are crammed into this long, thin painting which was once the right wing of a triptych (a painting in three parts). The man in front is the donor, a sixteenth-century abbot wearing the white robes of a Premonstratensian canon. The man behind is Saint Ambrose, Bishop of Milan in the fourth century. He holds a scourge -- a whip with many tails -- symbolising the penance he imposed on the Emperor Theodosius for his massacre of the people of Thessalonica.

On the back of the panel is a crosier (staff) and a scroll with the words 'NE QUID NIMIS' ('Moderation in all things'). This was a popular motto and was used by at least two senior Premonstratensian abbots. Ambrose, however, was not a common name in the Netherlands, and he was not a widely venerated saint. There can be little doubt that the donor here is Ambrosius van Engelen, Abbot of Park, just south of Leuven, a notable patron (he died in 1543). The motto appears in manuscripts and stained glass he commissioned and was afterwards used by the abbey itself. The quality of the vestments in the painting perhaps reflect van Engelen's own interests: he was a distinguished embroiderer who ornamented a complete set of vestments of cloth of gold and made many figure compositions in embroidery.

The panel seems to be the work of more than one artist and was done in two stages. The faces of the two men are different in both style and quality, a difference that cannot be fully explained by the fact that the donor's face is very damaged and has been much restored. It seems the head and habit of the donor were painted before the saint's robe and by a less competent painter. Saint Ambrose's face is close to the type often used by Albrecht Bouts, who in 1520 was probably the leading painter in Leuven and the obvious person to whom the Abbot of Park would turn to for a triptych. We don't know why the donor portrait was delegated to another painter, presumably one of Bouts's assistants.

The triptych, which showed the Virgin and Child in the central panel and Saint Augustine on the left wing, has been dated to 1520. It may have remained at Park Abbey until 1797 when the community were expelled and the furnishings of the church auctioned. The other parts have not been identified.

Style: High Renaissance