wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
This composition of Christ as the Salvator Mundi ('Saviour of the World') adored by his mother, the Virgin Mary, was very popular in the early sixteenth century. These are workshop copies of originals painted by Quinten Massys towards the beginning of his career.

Christ and The Virgin were evidently painted by assistants who were skilled practitioners of Massys' style. His workshop continued to produce further versions over a long period, as did other artists, such as Joos van Cleve. Although these two panels have always been regarded as a diptych, they were not actually made to go together. Their supports differ in many ways, and the panel showing the Virgin has been cut down while that showing Christ retains its unpainted edges. The Virgin probably came from the stock in Massys' workshop and was cut down to be paired with the painting of Christ. They were probably painted between approximately 1510 and 1525.

The gilding is modern. Small areas of the original background are visible to the left of the Virgin's right eye and under her hair: it is gilded and ornamented with dots of red lake pigment.

Style: High Renaissance
These two very large canvases may once have been part of a series of perhaps six or more paintings. They are very large -- over two metres wide and almost two metres high -- and it is likely that they were made to decorate an upper wall between pilasters in a Venetian palace, possibly the Palazzo Vendramin on the Grand Canal. Such a series would have decorated a whole room, like wallpaper today.

It was usual elsewhere in Italy to paint directly on the plaster when decorating walls, a technique known as fresco. However, while fresco had been popular in Venice, it was increasingly being replaced through the middle of the century by large canvases like these, in part because fresco was not suited to the city's damp climate. These pictures were painted hastily using only a limited range of colours, which may be because they were intended as interior decoration rather than as gallery pictures.

Landscape with the Expulsion of the Harpies illustrates a scene from the Argonautica, an epic romance written by Apollonius Rhodius in the third century BC. A naked woman points to the sky as Zetes and Calais, the winged sons of Boreas, god of the north wind, put down food as bait to catch the dragon-like harpies. King Phineas stands beside the female figure of Fortune, pointing upward as the young Boreads launch themselves into the air to do battle in the clouds.

The hybrid women in Landscape with a Scene of Enchantment could be beastly followers of Circe also described in the Argonautica (Book IV) and the sleeping man may be Odysseus. Two turbaned figures, emerging from a maze, embrace and talk to one another, while at the top of the picture another naked figure seems to slide into the clouds. The very specific elements in this scene suggest that it illustrates a particular story, although we do not know which one.

Style: High Renaissance
This acknowledged masterpiece represents Wilkie at the height of his powers. Melding seventeenth century Dutch and Flemish influences with the contemporary demand for genre scenes, the artist created an artwork that celebrated the victory of the Battle of Waterloo (1815), while redefining what constituted ‘history painting’. Chelsea Pensioners caused a sensation at the Royal Academy in 1822 and confirmed the artist’s preeminent position in the British Art world. The National Gallery was founded two years later with the acquisition of 38 paintings from the estate of John Julius Angerstein, among which were works by William Hogarth, Joshua Reynolds, and The Village Holiday by Wilkie. From the beginning, British art and Wilkie, then a contemporary living artist, was central to the Gallery’s collection.

Chelsea Pensioners neatly encapsulates how the emerging National Gallery was a direct outcome of British wartime and post-war pride and patriotism. It was during the Napoleonic War period that London overtook Paris and Amsterdam as the centre of the old master market and critical and popular opinion moved decidedly towards the idea that British art could now hold its own with the long-established European schools, including that of France.

Style: Regency
The soft greys and browns of this painting reflect an effort among artists in early seventeenth-century Haarlem to experiment with how restricted use of colour could intensify the atmosphere and reality of a landscape.

Van Ruysdael uses the diagonal spit of land to show distance – it narrows as it runs away from us. The limpid waters of the river drift across the foreground, curve round, and slowly disappear out towards the sea. The low horizon opens up into a vast sky and van Ruysdael echoes the feathery pompoms of the alder trees in the puffed shapes of the dark grey clouds overhead. Where the cloud breaks, the pale sky reflects in the still water, and the trees are mirrored perfectly along the shoreline.

This is a broad view condensed into a relatively small picture. Although it’s a tranquil image, it wasn't intended as an attractive interpretation of the river as a background for leisure and enjoyment: that’s not how Dutch rivers were used at the time. They were the veins carrying the lifeblood of the country, shown in the activity and detail of the picture. Life was -- almost literally -- lived on the water.

The fishermen in the shallow-bottomed boats are at work. They may talk or even relax for a moment, but the corks floating on the water's surface show the outline of the large nets cast out for a catch. They’re busy manoeuvring around it. One man wears a jacket in a dusty pink -- the one spot of colour, save small, sparkling dots of white here and there. To the left, a ferry laden with passengers skims from one bank to the other, propelled by two energetic oarsmen and making for the village among the trees. There, a church spire pierces the sky, a visual response to the peak of the sail of the beached vessel waiting for the tide.

On the right, a lone man steers his craft down river, rowing hard, his goods -- perhaps a delivery -- stowed in the stern. Behind him, almost hidden in the trees, two large buildings with huge chimneys, not often shown in such a painting, hint at more industrial use.

This is an imaginary scene, painted in the artist's studio, though van Ruysdael would have based it on sketches made in the countryside around Haarlem, where he lived. It bears a striking similarity to his A River with Fishermen drawing a Net. The two pictures together fill out a story of the hard work of the men of the riverside -- paintings not quite as tranquil as they first appear.

Style: Baroque
Christ’s body, wrapped in a white shroud, is being placed in a tomb by his grief-stricken family and followers. The Virgin Mary, clasping his wrist, seems on the edge of collapse; John the Evangelist holds her up. Behind them are Mary Cleophas and Mary Salome, one wiping tears from her eyes, the other holding her veil to her mouth. Mary Magdalene supports Christ's legs and gazes sadly at his face. Two secret converts to Christianity -- Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea -- lower Christ’s body into the tomb. This is the only surviving image of the Entombment by Dirk Bouts, and is a quiet expression of intense emotion.

It is a rare survivor of a once common type, a picture painted on cloth rather than wooden panels. Made in large numbers in the Netherlands in the fifteenth century, few exist today. They are notoriously delicate and this one is in remarkably good condition. Muted tones and a chalky appearance were characteristic of these cloth paintings, but time has also shaped the image we see today. A film of dirt, which covers the entire surface, cannot be removed, and thinly-applied layers of paint have worn away in some places, revealing now-discoloured linen. Colours have changed and faded: the Virgin’s cloak is now brownish, and Joseph of Arimathea’s tabard, once pale blue, appears green.

But a hint of the original colour can be seen along the top edge, where a strip of brighter blue sky has been protected by an old frame. The rust-stained holes show where the linen was tacked to a frame, perhaps soon after the painting was made. Along the bottom edge we can see the remains of a painted border. Coloured borders are often found on paintings on linen. It seems that linen cloths were stretched on temporary supports to be painted. Once finished they were cut along the outer edges of these borders. Some were then mounted on coarser fabric and hung like tapestries. Others were attached to panels, and a frame was then laid on top of the painted border. The Entombment must have been given a frame rather smaller than intended.

Netherlandish painting was in great demand across Europe at this time, and those on cloth were especially popular as they could be rolled up for transportation and then mounted once they reached their destination. Bouts probably made this painting for export to Italy, possibly Venice, where it remained until the nineteenth century. It was possibly, although not certainly, part of a polyptych, other parts of which survive in other collections.

Bouts's pictures are extremely difficult to date. In The Entombment, the perspective is mismanaged; in his datable pictures of the 1460s and early 1470s Bouts shows a remarkable command of perspective. The picture is also strongly influenced by Rogier van der  Weyden's paintings of the 1430s and early 1440s. It was probably painted in the 1450s.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
Bathed in a bright spotlight, a man stands alone in front of a fairly plain background. His clothes -- he is wearing boots with spurs, a short cape and a wide brimmed hat with an ostrich feather -- suggest that he is a soldier.

Quast made a number of small full-length portraits of sitters in similar poses to the one depicted here. However, it is not known whether this painting is a portrait or a generic image of an anonymous soldier that can be related to the popular guardroom scenes of the time.

This image was painted over part of another painting: we can see the ghostly shapes of a figure on horseback, moving from right to left, accompanied by another figure walking next to the horse. Quast, who also painted history subjects, probably reused and cut down a panel that was in his studio.

Style: Baroque
This is the only known work by Marie Blancour, a French woman who is thought to have lived during the seventeenth century. Her signature is clearly visible on the stone ledge at the bottom of the painting. We don't know when Blancour's painting was made but it could have been during the 1650s.

A bunch of flowers is crammed into a terracotta pot. Blancour has chosen them to create height and width in the bouquet, and to distribute colour -- we move from red poppy at the top, to the red and white tulips, and then to the white viburnum with its tightly bunched flower heads and white petals at the bottom. Many of the flowers are in the final stages of bloom: the yellow petals of the narcissus or daffodil are fully open, just above it one of the tulip's petals is about to fall off, and the weighty viburnum flower heads droop towards the stone ledge at the bottom left. The blue of the primula creates a subtle contrast with the expanse of red and white, and the single red anemone or wind flower adds to the variety of sizes and textures of the flower heads that surround it. The artist attempts to lead our eye deeper into the picture by placing the large red poppy head facing away from us and showing the lowest viburnum head partly in shadow and giving it a green tinge to suggest that it's further away than the one in the light. The way the light falls at different angles on the flowers makes them look three-dimensional.

Our painting by Rachel Ruysch, Flowers in a Vase, painted during the 1680s, is a much more refined and skilful flower painting. Blancour is comparatively less successful at using the effects of light and shadow to lead our eye deeper into the picture, and portraying intricate details taken from the close study of each flower type. However, there are similarities in the choice of flowers: both artists use white aquilegia and white viburnum.

Not all of these flowers bloom at the same time, so the artist would have worked from individual drawings or painted studies made throughout the year. Individual flower species had symbolic meanings during the seventeenth century: anemones had a religious significance, tulips symbolised desire and narcissi represented the dangers of being self-absorbed. It is not clear whether the flowers in this painting were intended to convey such meanings, whether they symbolised the transience of human life in general, or whether they were simply to be enjoyed as decorative objects.

Style: Baroque
Philips Wouwerman has captured the violence and cruelty of battle as it was in seventeenth-century Europe, when Holland was closely involved in the wars that raged across the continent. Most of the scene is in shadow, with details picked out in one or two flashes of colour: a horse’s rump, a red jacket, a helmet, a fallen battle flag. The cold, brilliant light is more like cannon fire than sunlight.

Wouwerman has also evoked the terrible sounds of battle and the claustrophobia, with shoving, slashing, thrusting arms and bodies entangled till they seem almost wedged in, unable to turn or to escape. The strong diagonal of the fight descending the hillside adds to the instability of it all. Not just the armies are at peril: the castle on top of the cliff and a second a short way behind it look as if they might keel over and tumble at any minute. The gaping mouth of the castle and the broken spikes of the blackened fence on the ridge of the hill seem to add to the terror of the event.

Overhead, billowing grey smoke from cannon and burning buildings rises up and merges with grey clouds, making the cliffs beyond the battle seem almost insubstantial, and the tiny figures standing on them like ghosts. A single horseman gallops away from the combat towards the sea.

This picture is one of the largest battle paintings that Wouwerman ever made and is one of his few dated works. We know it was painted in 1646, and like his other battle scenes, it’s entirely imaginary. Although he makes a feature of a flag carried by a horseman silhouetted against the sky, it is torn and unrecognisable. The other flags, the uniforms and the buildings are inventions. In another painting, Cavalry attacking Infantry, we see what might be a blue Swedish flag -- Sweden was at war with Poland during the time of the painting -- but it’s far from conclusive and probably fictitious like the others.

The realism comes from the dramatic composition and eerie lighting, the depiction of bodies and faces, and, perhaps above all, the portrayal of the animals. Wouwerman was known for his ability to paint horses, and he has included his signature white horse in this picture. You can find it in several other of his works in the National Gallery, including A Horse being Shod outside a Village Smithy and The Interior of a Stable -- both show these elegant creatures in happier, more wholesome surroundings.

Style: Baroque
The story of the death of Saint John the Baptist is related in the Gospel of Mark (6: 16--29). John had criticised King Herod for marrying his brother's wife, Herodias, and she sought revenge. At Herod's birthday feast, her daughter -- not named in the Gospel but later identified as Salome -- so delighted the King by her dancing that he promised her anything she asked for. Encouraged by her mother, she asked for the Baptist's head; reluctantly the King agreed to keep his promise and had John beheaded.

This is a late work by Caravaggio, probably painted towards the end of his life in Naples, where he resided in 1606--7 and again in 1609--10. With an economy typical of his mature works, Caravaggio has reduced the story to its essentials, focusing on the human tragedy. He has moved away from the broader colour range and descriptive detail of his Roman works, such as The Supper at Emmaus, and conveys the scene's emotional power through a more muted palette, pronounced chiaroscuro and dramatic gestures. The brutish executioner places John's head on a salver held by Salome, whose serious expression and sidelong glance are enigmatic: is she turning away from the head in disgust or shame, appalled at the horror of what she has brought about? In contrast to the young and beautiful Salome is the elderly maidservant beside her, her face wrinkled with age and her hands clasped together in grief. The half-length format brings the figures up close, enhancing the dramatic impact of the scene. Although the composition appears simple and straightforward, it hides a sophisticated physical and psychological interplay between the main protagonists. Salome and the executioner are subtly linked by their poses -- the angles of their heads echo each other and a strong raking light falls across their faces -- but their role is very different. The executioner's face is impassive as he thrusts the head towards Salome: he may have wielded the sword but the guilt for the Baptist's death lies with her.

Caravaggio returned to the theme of John's beheading more than once in his later years. As well as a vast canvas in St John's Cathedral in Valletta, Malta, he produced a scene closely related to ours showing Salome with the Baptist's head (Palacio Real, Madrid). The Madrid painting is the earlier of the two, probably dating from the artist's first stay in Naples (1606--7), while the looser handling and pared down colours in our version -- which lacks the bright red drapery enveloping Salome in the Madrid picture -- suggests that it was painted in the final months of Caravaggio's life.

Technically, this painting is typical of Caravaggio's late style. The handling of the paint is freer than in his earlier works, with a broad application in place of finely modelled gradations, and the dark ground left deliberately exposed in several areas to provide the mid-tone in the shadows. The marked chiaroscuro and dramatic naturalism of Caravaggio's late style, and his use of people drawn from the streets as models, had an enduring influence on painters in Naples such as Battistello Caracciolo, Mattia Preti and especially Jusepe de Ribera.

Style: Caravaggist, Academic
Oedipus, a figure from Greek mythology, stands nude and in profile before the Sphinx, who guards the entrance to the ancient city of Thebes. The Sphinx -- a monster with the face, head and shoulders of a woman, a lion’s body, and bird’s wings -- asks Oedipus to solve the riddle she poses to all travellers seeking to enter the city: ‘What has a voice and walks on all fours in the morning, on two at noon, and on three in the evening?’ Oedipus correctly answers that it is man who crawls on all fours as a child, walks on two legs as an adult, and uses a walking stick as a third leg in old age. The bones of a previous traveller, killed by the Sphinx for having failed to solve the riddle, lie at the bottom of the picture. Thebes is visible in the distance on the right.

The theme of a monster defeated by human intelligence clearly appealed to Ingres. The picture also complements another of his paintings, Angelica saved by Ruggierro, which shows a chivalrous knight attacking a sea monster to save a princess. But this is also a painting of a man facing his destiny, as Oedipus’s actions will lead him to become King of Thebes, as the oracle predicted at his birth, and to unknowingly marry his own mother, Jocasta. This unwitting tragedy and its consequences is the drama of Oedipus Rex, the middle play of Sophocles'  Theban Plays.

This painting is a later, and smaller, version of one painted in 1808 and subsequently reworked in 1827 (Louvre, Paris). The first version of Oedipus and the Sphinx was essentially a figure study that Ingres painted while studying at the French Academy in Rome. It was sent to Paris to be judged by members of the Institut de France. As required by the Institut's rules, the figure of Oedipus was based upon a live model, although the pose was derived from the classical statue, Hermes Fastening his Sandal (Louvre), a Roman marble copy of a lost Greek bronze. Oedipus's body is presented as an arrangement of geometrical shapes; for example, the triangle formed by his left arm, thigh and chest is mirrored and inverted by his left upper arm and forearm. The use of profile for both Oedipus and the Sphinx, together with the shallow space in much of the picture, recalls classical friezes and ancient Greek vases, which Ingres used as the sources for his deliberately classical artistic style .

The painting was once owned by Edgar Degas, who bought it for his private collection in the mid-1890s.

Style: Neoclassical
Gainsborough is known to have painted six double portraits of his daughters Mary and Margaret, as well as separate portraits of each of them, between about 1756 and 1770. The Painters Daughter's chasing a Butterfly is probably the earliest of these double portraits. The Painter's Daughters with a Cat is likely to have been painted in Bath a year or so after the family moved there in late 1759.

Here, Mary appears to be about ten or eleven years old, and Margaret about eight or nine. Margaret leans her head back against her sister's shoulder as she cradles their cat in her arms. The sketched cat has been partly painted out with a different yellow than the one Gainsborough used for Mary's dress. This may have been to make it less distracting when it became clear the painting would never be finished. Mary rests her cheek against Margaret's forehead, her arms wrapped around her sister, partly to help her with the writhing cat -- whose tail she appears to pull -- but also, it seems, with love and protection for her little sister. Their father captures this moving gesture of tenderness.

After priming his canvas, Gainsborough drew the subject in white chalk or pastel, working swiftly and directly on the pinkish-brown ground. The cat held in Margaret's clasped hands is very lightly sketched in dark brushstrokes. Expressive, fluid touches of paint build up the forms with colour, light and dark rather than with line. Although the faces have been painted, most of the picture is left unfinished. The feathery pattern of gold, blue and grey brushstrokes that surrounds the girls seems to suggest storm clouds, sun and woodland, creating a decorative backdrop that feels emotionally charged, atmospheric and timeless.

Gainsborough paints his daughters in attitudes that are natural to them and familiar to him. No other portrait of this date conveys so strongly the sense that it is painted from life. The result is very different from Gainsborough's commissioned portraits of children whom he did not know so well. In those paintings he expresses children's youthful charm, social confidence and financial security. In The Painter's Daughters with a Cat, Gainsborough observes his own daughters with a moving insight that comes from knowing them intimately and understanding their vulnerability.

A lithograph of the picture was published by Richard Lane in about 1827 after Mary's death. It reverses the image and emphasises the children's vulnerability with the invented title The Orphans. The cat has been omitted and the sketchy details completed in such a way that much of the moving naturalism of Gainsborough's original painting has been lost.

Style: Neoclassical, Georgian