wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
The Virgin Mary stands behind a parapet on which the Christ Child is seated. She rests her hand on a book, and Christ holds an apple -- it symbolises the Fall of Man, from which he was believed to offer redemption. With the other, he twists to reach out for the flower his mother offers him.

Painted in around 1500, this small panel is one of a number of pictures of the Virgin and Child which show at various removes the impact of Leonardo da Vinci's revolutionary style of painting. The artist was an anonymous follower of  Boltraffio, who was Leonardo's best pupil.

Many images of the Virgin and Child painted at this period -- by this artist and by other imitators of Leonardo, such as Marco d'Oggiono, Giampietrino, Andrea Solario -- were variations on Leonardo's Madonna Litta (State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg) of around 1491--5. Here, the Virgin's profile is sharply outlined against a dark wall pierced with windows that show distant views, as in the Madonna Litta. Other elements, however, come from elsewhere: the composition and simple colour scheme of the Virgin's clothes -- red, green and blue -- recall Marco d'Oggiono's Madonna of the Violets (Collection De Navarro) of about 1498--1500; Christ's twisting body seems inspired by Boltraffio's Headless Body of a Child, turning to the Right (Louvre, Paris) while his gesture harks back to The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and the Infant Saint John the Baptist.

The painter of our panel seems to have been in the habit of creating collages based on bits of compositions by other artists. The views through the windows are perhaps where the artist expressed his own personality -- a tiny female figure does the washing in a river on the left, and a man with a bundle on a stick over his shoulder walks through the fields on the right.

Style: High Renaissance
Two gondoliers wearing traditional carnival costumes propel their boat across the Venetian lagoon, their oars stirring the water, their passengers sheltered by a canopy. On the horizon, sails catch the breeze.

In the distance is the tower of Malghera, near Mestre on the mainland (Guardi's larger View of the Venetian Lagoon with the Tower of Malghera is also in the National Gallery's collection). To the left, you can just make out several figures, perhaps fishermen, stood on a thin strip of land.

The painting is now quite worn and damaged in places but it still has the atmosphere of a summer's day, with changing light on the water's surface. This is likely to be a late work of around 1780, and comparable with a painting of a similar date in the Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan.

Style: Neoclassical
The leader of a troop of horsemen lowers his hat to salute Philippe-François, 1st Duke of Arenberg and Duke of Arschot and Croy, who doffs his own feathered hat in response. Arenberg was an important figure at the court of Brussels: he served in the army of the Southern Netherlands, where he distinguished himself at the Siege of Arras in 1654, and was subsequently made captain general of the Flemish fleet in 1660 and governor of Hainault in 1663.

The Duke's wealth and status is emphasised by his mode of travel: a coach pulled by six matching grey horses, all decorated in gold studs and tassels. His outrider, who is performing an elegantly rearing trick called a levade, is similarly expensively dressed in the Duke's colours of yellow and red. The presence of weary-looking dogs and their handler suggests that a hunt has just taken place, and that this beautiful and expansive landscape is the Duke's own estate.

Adam-François van der Meulen was a painter of travel scenes and battles, as well as a tapestry designer and printmaker. He left Brussels for France to work for King Louis XIV in about 1662, not long after this picture was painted.

Style: Baroque
Filippo Fasanini, who died in 1531, instructed the executors of his will to commission this altarpiece for his chapel dedicated to Saint Philip and Saint James in S. Domenico, Bologna. It is signed on the throne's plinth: IERONIMVS. TREVISIVS. P.[INXIT] ('Girolamo of Treviso painted this').

Filippo Fasanini was a professor of rhetoric and poetry at the University of Bologna. He was much appreciated as a poet and orator and was especially famous for his translations of Greek texts. His will stipulated that the altarpiece was to represent the Virgin Mary with the infant Christ, Saint Joseph, Saint Philip, Saint James and his own likeness taken from 'naturali archetypo' (a model from nature). Filippo Fasanini is at the bottom left, in his black academic gown. His sunken features suggest that his portrait was painted from a death mask -- a plaster cast of the face of the corpse. Given Girolamo's experience as a sculptor he may have made the mask himself. Although it is common to find sculpted busts made from death masks during this period, it is unusual to find one followed so closely in a painting.

The infant Christ, standing between the Virgin's knees, raises his hand in blessing towards Filippo Fasanini, who kneels before him. The patron's name saint, Philip, is probably the one on the left presenting him to the Virgin and Christ. Saint Joseph, the elderly man, and Saint James, holding a book and pilgrim staff, are on the right. The chapel is dedicated to Saint James the Less, who shares his feast day with Saint Philip, but the pilgrim staff held by Saint James here is the attribute of Saint James the Greater -- there may have been some confusion as to which Saint James was being represented.

The Virgin's halo is painted in lead-tin yellow to look like gold. The radiating brushstrokes are thicker near her head and blended or merged at the edge, creating a shimmering disc. The infant Christ seems once to have had an aura of rays coming from his head. The haloes have suffered from wear or from increasing translucency where the paint was thinly applied, and now those of the saints can barely be seen.

The prominent asymmetrical columns in this altarpiece suggest that Girolamo had seen Titian's Pesaro Altarpiece erected in the church of the Frari in Venice in 1526. The reverse of a drawn study for an altarpiece with four saints by Girolamo of about 1531 (now in the British Museum, London) shows him experimenting with designs for altarpieces with an oblique view of a canopied throne as in this painting.

Work on the Fasanini altarpiece started on 25 October 1531 and was probably finished by 5 October 1533. It was praised by Vasari in his 1550 edition of The Lives of the Artists as Girolamo's best work.

Style: High Renaissance
In this scene inspired by Ovid's Metamorphoses (Book IV, 783--960), Andromeda, daughter of the Ethiopian queen Cassiope, is about to be sacrificed to placate a monster summoned by Neptune, god of the sea. The hero Perseus appears at top left on his winged horse Pegasus, preparing to kill the monster and rescue the distressed princess.

Andromeda is depicted naked and surrounded by a swirling cloak, which is positioned to preserve her modesty. Her statuesque anatomy and stylised drapery are typical of Guido Reni, and comparable to his treatment of other female protagonists in his mythological paintings, including Atalanta and Hippomenes (Museo di Capodimonte, Naples).

This work is a copy, with some variations, after Reni's painting of about 1635 (Pallavicini Collection, Rome). It was probably made in the latter half of the seventeenth century and deviates from the Pallavicini painting most notably in the position of Perseus' right arm. In Reni's original, Perseus' arm is drawn across his body; here, it is raised to strike the sea monster. It was not unusual for copyists to make alterations to the compositions they were replicating, and they often did so at the request of their clients.

Style: Caravaggist, Academic
According to the Gospel of Matthew (2: 1--12), wise men came from the East to worship the infant Christ. By the Middle Ages, they had been reimagined as the Three Kings, each assigned a name, an origin and an age -- and also one of the three precious gifts mentioned in the Gospel. Caspar, King of Tarsus, aged 60, presented gold; Melchior, from Arabia, aged 40, presented frankincense; and Balthasar, from Saba, aged 20 (and usually, by the sixteenth century, represented as dark skinned), presented myrrh.

Girolamo da Carpi's depiction of the subject is unusual. In Renaissance paintings the holy family is often shown in a stable incorporated within the ruins of a classical structure, but here there are only a few stone steps and a tree. The kings are generally depicted with an entourage, but here only Balthasar has attendants and there is no train of figures and animals in the landscape.

The group of the Virgin and the infant Christ with the first two kings is derived from a cartoon made by followers of Raphael in 1519 for a tapestry of this subject, known as the Scuola Nuova (New School) tapestry cartoon. This cartoon is the source for the figure of Caspar, who is normally shown kneeling, but is here prostrated on the ground. He is about to kiss Christ's foot, which is extended towards him. The Virgin holds Caspar's gift in her left hand, while Christ holds the lid and touches the coins inside; although this is commonly represented in Northern European pictures of the subject, it is relatively rare in Italian ones. Melchior eagerly offers up his container of frankincense.

Balthasar's action is very strange -- it looks as though he is being set upon by robbers. He holds the pot of myrrh in one hand, while his other is on his sword. He is probably removing his sword and sheath before paying homage to the 'prince of peace'. The men beside him are his attendants, helping him to prepare for his meeting with Christ.

As well as the Scuola Nuova tapestry cartoon, Girolamo's composition, especially the figures of Balthasar and his attendants, may have been influenced by a drawing of the Adoration of the Magi (now in the British Museum, London) made by Baldassare Peruzzi (1481--1537) in 1522. Peruzzi may have been involved in the design for the Scuola Nuova tapestry cartoon and his central group also derives from it. Girolamo da Treviso's Adoration of the Kings is based on Peruzzi's drawing.

Formerly catalogued as Ferrarese School, and then as North Italian, this painting is now believed to be by Girolamo da Carpi, who trained in Ferrara. It is highly characteristic of his work, both in details such as the elaborate sandals and in the colour palette, especially the inky blue sky. The tight mass of figures, exaggerated expressions and the same heavy, twisted drapery are all derived from the work of Giulio Romano, whose Mannerist style influenced Girolamo. There is another, slightly earlier, version of this painting by Girolamo da Carpi now in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City.

Style: High Renaissance
Two women sit on a bed playing with a baby -- one of them holds out an apple for the little boy to grasp in his chubby fingers. With an encouraging smile, the other points it out to him. The baby is Christ’s cousin, John. This is his naming day and he will grow up to be known as John the Baptist.

The old man sitting beside the bed writing on a tablet is Zachariah, the infant’s father. He and his wife Elisabeth were past child-bearing age, so when an angel prophesied John’s birth, Zachariah doubted its possibility and had his voice taken away as a punishment. On the naming day, the guests asked Elisabeth if the baby was to be named Zachariah after his father, as was the custom; Elisabeth answered that he would be called John. Surprised, they looked at Zachariah for confirmation. He wrote ‘His name is John’ and immediately recovered the power of speech (Luke 1: 63--64).

It’s not clear which of the figures is Elisabeth, but it’s a happy, comfortable group, the two women preoccupied with the child rather than the old man. The younger woman with the halo is thought to be the Virgin Mary, although the Bible says that she left Elisabeth’s house before John's birth. Fabritius is playing a little with the story, perhaps to liken the holy family -- Mary, Joseph and Christ -- to ordinary Dutch families with a wide network of relatives, rather than the isolated figures of a religious icon.

Religious pictures were not used in the new Dutch Protestant churches, the walls of which were painted white and left unadorned, but small, narrative images of Bible stories were popular in homes. Artists sometimes showed their figures dressed in a fanciful idea of biblical costume -- you can see Rembrandt’s imaginative take on this in Belshazzar’s Feast -- but they also chose to show figures in contemporary dress, as Fabritius has done in this painting. The Gospel of Luke says that the baby John was only four days old on his naming day; Fabritius has shown him as almost a toddler, in the padded safety cap worn in the seventeenth-century Netherlands by children learning to walk.

Barent Fabritius was the brother of Carel Fabritius, Rembrandt's most talented student. Carel died young when the Delft municipal gunpowder magazine exploded near his studio. He was already beginning to change from his master’s style, painting dark figures against lighter backgrounds. But Barent must have seen Rembrandt’s work and liked his use of deep shadow and soft, glowing light to achieve a warm, intimate atmosphere.

Style: Baroque
Martin Archer Shee painted this portrait of the actor William Thomas Lewis for himself. It was one of seven works that he exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1792 when he was just 22. Shee loved the theatre and many of the portraits he exhibited over the years were of actors and actresses. He was proud enough of this portrait to still show it in his gallery in Cavendish Square, London, 40 years later when he was President of the Royal Academy.

Born about 1748, the son of an actor, Lewis made his first stage appearance in Dublin, and his London debut at the Covent Garden Theatre in 1773. He was to remain at Covent Garden for his whole acting career. He played at least 194 parts over the next 35 years: 134 in comedy, 15 in farce and 45 in tragedy. He took his last curtain call on 29 May 1808 and died in London on 13 January 1811. Shee shows him dressed for his role as the Marquis in The Midnight Hour -- a short three-act comedy which opened at Covent Garden Theatre on 22 May 1787. In the play the Marquis falls in love with Julia, whose uncle has arranged for her to marry someone else. The Marquis must use all his wit to win Julia by 'the midnight hour'.

Although Shee depicts Lewis in the Marquis' rich black satin costume, he has not shown him on the stage during a particular scene. Instead he portrays Lewis as a celebrated actor. The expression seems to capture Lewis's stage manner with 'winking eyes, and little teeth-shewing laugh'. Unfortunately the black shadows of Lewis's costume and the red drapery behind him now suffer from wide and disfiguring cracks (already visible by 1909) and the picture is obscured by yellowing varnish.

In 1800 Shee painted a different, bust-length portrait of Lewis in a black coat and white cravat with dark brown unpowdered hair, now in the collection of the Garrick Club in London. Lewis was frequently depicted in character by a wide range of artists -- some 43 portraits are known, but these are mainly small engravings. The celebrated portraitist Sir Thomas Lawrence may also have painted Lewis in his Portrait of a Gentleman, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1789 (now untraced).

The sitter's son, Thomas Denison Lewis, bequeathed this portrait and the interest on a capital sum of £10,000 to the National Gallery in 1862. The Lewis Fund allowed the National Gallery to buy outright such paintings as Antonello da Messina's Portrait of a Man, Avercamp's A Scene on the Ice near a Town and Gainsborough's Cornard Wood. It continues to be used for new acquisitions in conjunction with other funds.

Style: Neoclassical, Georgian
This fragment comes from the border decoration of a large painting in fresco -- a technique that involves painting directly onto wet plaster -- which showed the fall of Lucifer, the rebel angel who was cast out of heaven. It once decorated a wall of the church of the confraternity of Sant' Angelo in Arezzo. There are two other fragments in our collection: Saint Michael and Other Angels and Decorative Border with a Seraph and Saint Catherine.

The fragment shows two saints in decorative shapes with white borders. The winged saint  holding a sword is Michael; the other is Saint Stephen, identifiable by the stone upon his head (he was killed by stoning). Their haloes were originally gilded but now only a tin under-layer remains.

The remains of an inscription above the central band refers to a man named Christophanus, a member of the confraternity that commissioned the picture. He might be the small kneeling figure in white at in the centre of the fragment. This figure is a flagellant, a person who practised self-flagellation as a form of spiritual repentance and devotion; he carries a whip in his right hand.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
According to legend, Saint Christopher was a giant, twelve feet tall. He was called Christophoros, Greek for 'the bearer of Christ'. When he converted to Christianity he was assigned the Christian service of helping travellers across a river. One day a child asked to be carried across but Saint Christopher found him so heavy that he was bowed down with the weight. The child revealed that he was Christ and that Christopher was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. Here, Christ has a faint halo of yellow light.

It's clearly a blustery day: the mantles of both figures are blowing in the wind. Behind them, the river broadens into an estuary where seagoing ships are sailing. In the ship on the left, two sailors are furling the top sail on the foremast; on the right is a rowing boat. In the foreground, the man on the right with a staff and long grey beard must be the hermit who instructed Saint Christopher in the Christian faith. There are shells on the beach at his feet and the building with a bell on its roof behind him, might be his hermitage. On the other bank two men walk along a path through trees towards a seaside village. Above the village is a very large castle, behind which is a walled town with a large steepled church and various other buildings. On the back of the panel is a partly coloured underdrawing of a landscape.

The figures of the saint and the hermit resemble those in a woodcut of about 1501 by Albrecht Dürer, which they may be related to either directly or indirectly. The style and technique of this painting are close enough to that of Saint John on Patmos to justify an attribution to the same workshop, although not to the same artist.

Style: High Renaissance
In the past this painting was believed to be a portrait of Raphael as the sitter slightly resembles his self portrait in The School of Athens of 1509--11 (Vatican). It is not, however, by Raphael and is probably not a portrait of him either. It was previously described as Umbrian and possibly Bolognese. At one time it was also believed to be by Raphael's associate, Timoteo Viti (1469--1523), who became court painter in Urbino after the death of Raphael's father.

Technical examination suggests that the picture is an old one, but the face has been entirely repainted and the painting seems artificially aged. It was probably purchased at a high price by the collector George Salting as a self portrait by Raphael and it entered the National Gallery's collection as part of the Salting Bequest in 1910.

Style: High Renaissance
The coronation of the Virgin is an episode related in biblical apocrypha, occurring upon her arrival in heaven following the Assumption (when angels carried her body and soul to heaven three days after her death). The subject gained popularity in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and depictions of it typically show the Virgin being crowned by Christ and God the Father, often accompanied by the Holy Ghost in the form of a dove.

In this work, however, elements of Mary's assumption are mixed with those of her coronation. Attended by angels, the Virgin sits on a throne of clouds. Winged putti carry a crown, perhaps preparing to bestow the title Regina angelorum ('Queen of the angels') upon her. She is bathed in a radiant glow that emanates from the heavens, against a painted backdrop reminiscent of the early Renaissance tradition of gold-ground painting (as in The Coronation of the Virgin by Lorenzo Monaco).

This work is a development of an earlier Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin of similar dimensions, painted by Reni in about 1602--3 (Museo del Prado, Madrid). The earlier painting, in which the Virgin is depicted with her hands crossed over her chest, is very similar in its composition, though it lacks the vibrant colour palette and complex drapery arrangements of the National Gallery's painting. The changes in the artist's style may be the result of his time in Rome, where he travelled together with Francesco Albani to work for Annibale Carracci on the Palazzo Farnese frescoes in 1602. Reni included more varied poses and expressions for the angels in the National Gallery's work -- particularly those singing on the right, and the small putti in the foreground reading from a hymn sheet -- giving this celestial scene an air of naturalism. His composition was copied in 1626 by Domenichino (Musée Bonnat, Bayonne), proof of the particular success Reni achieved in this version of the subject.

Reni's Coronation of the Virgin is painted on a copper plate. The artist began to paint on copper in the early 1590s and was considered especially successful at it. The smooth, hard surface of the copper allowed Reni to paint in minutely fine detail, especially evident here in the wings of the angels: each feather has been brushed in carefully, and they are strikingly lifelike. The rich, bold colours have maintained their brilliance and saturation thanks to the non-absorbent copper support. Technical examination has revealed that Reni covered the copper with a silver-coloured layer (a metal coating containing lead and tin), perhaps in an attempt to make his pigments appear even more luminous. Such a process was not unique to Reni, though certain artists favoured 'silvered' copper panels, including Reni's contemporaries, Guercino and Domenichino, as well as Adam Elsheimer and Claude. The jewel-like radiance achieved by painting on copper proved particularly attractive to seventeenth-century collectors, and this support was frequently used for reduced-sized replicas and gifted by artists to important patrons.

Style: Caravaggist, Academic
In 1621, at the age of ten, Ferdinand II de' Medici succeeded his father Cosimo II as Grand Duke of Tuscany, assuming power in 1627. He is shown here with Vittoria della Rovere, his wife; the couple had married in 1634.

Ferdinand wears a commander’s sash and the cross of the military order of San Stefano. In his right hand he grips a commander's baton, while Vittoria holds a fan in hers. The rose in her left hand, positioned between the two figures, could be a symbol of their union.

The poses of the couple are similar to those in individual portraits of them by Sustermans (now in the Uffizi, Florence), who worked as court painter to the rulers of Tuscany from 1619 or 1620. It's likely that this picture was based on the portraits rather than painted directly from life.

Style: Baroque