wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
This panel once formed part of a large polyptych (multi-panelled altarpiece) probably painted in Paris in around 1500. In it, a frightened deer cowers in the arms of an elderly man who wears a black cowl. An arrow -- intended for the animal -- sticks out of his hand, which rests on the deer's back. A richly dressed man and a clergyman kneel before him, while a group of hunters crowd behind them.

The wounded man is Saint Giles, a popular French saint, who was thought to have lived as a hermit near Arles (you can see the entrance to his cave among the rocks behind him). He ate fruits and berries and drank milk given to him by the deer.  The Golden Legend tells two stories about Saint Giles, one of which is shown in The Mass of Saint Giles and the other here.

One day a king was hunting in the forest near Giles's cave and came across a beautiful deer. When the hounds chased it, it fled to the saint, who prayed for her to be saved. At once the hounds turned tail and ran howling back to their masters. Startled by this strange behaviour, the king returned the next day with a bishop. He and his hunters surrounded the impenetrable thicket into which the deer had disappeared, and one of the hunters shot an arrow into it. The arrow missed the animal but seriously wounded Saint Giles. Recognising the man's holiness, the king was ashamed and offered him doctors and riches, all of which he refused; he depended on the power of prayer to cure him. Eventually, with the king's support, Giles founded a monastery -- Saint Gilles du Gard, near Arles, which came to be an important stop on the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela, Spain -- and he became a bishop.

Typically for this artist, the composition is split into two halves. The tree in the centre forms a vertical division between on the right-hand side the solitary saint in his verdant wilderness and on the left-hand side the crowd of fashionably dressed courtiers and the city behind them. The different types of plants and flowers in the wilderness are perhaps a reference to the legend that the desert flowered around Giles's hermitage. On the back of this panel a bishop saint, possibly Giles himself, is painted in grisaille to look like a statue in a niche.

Technical analysis tells us much about the artist's unusual technique. A great deal of underdrawing is visible to the naked eye, and yet more is seen by infrared reflectography. Some of the underdrawing is very sketchy and there are many alterations visible both in the underdrawing and the paint layer. The archer was not drawn in at all but painted over a horse's head, and the red circle in Giles's shoulder may have been the first idea for the wound he suffered when he tried to protect his deer. Clearly this artist was accustomed to working out his ideas on panel and making radical alterations at every stage of the work, rather than using preparatory drawings.

Style: High Renaissance
Previtali shows Christ as Salvator Mundi, or 'Saviour of the World', with a crystal orb in his left hand and his right hand raised in blessing. The orb, surmounted by a golden cross, symbolises Christ's rule on earth. His frontal pose and direct gaze are intended to appeal directly to the worshipper on a personal level. The painting was probably made for a private patron in Bergamo a few years after Previtali's return from Venice in or after 1512.

The image of Christ is surrounded by a painted marble frame, which makes it appear as though he is occupying a real space, and that we could reach into the picture and touch him. It also adds to the sense that the orb is projecting towards us. This feature was more common in Italian art around 1470 than the time this painting was made. The marble ledge is inscribed in capital letters: ANDREAS . PRIVITALUS . P.M.D. XVIIII ('Andrea Previtali painted this in 1519'). The device of the ledge was used frequently by artists influenced by Bellini and Cima -- Previtali was a pupil of Bellini and often included his teacher's name when signing his own works. His compositions also tend to refer back to Bellini's.

This type of image is a development of the 'Vera Ikon', the true image of Christ that was supposedly imprinted on Saint Veronica's cloth when she used it to wipe Christ's face on his way to be crucified. Here Christ's image is presented as though it were a contemporary portrait. Such pictures were popular in north-east Italy in the second half of the fifteenth and the early sixteenth century and were usually made for domestic settings. However, bust-length images of the Salvator Mundi sometimes also appeared in altarpieces: there is a triptych altarpiece by Antoniazzo with the Salvator Mundi as its central panel (now in the Prado, Madrid). The popularity of this type of painting in Venice may have been because large numbers of similar pictures were imported to the city from the Netherlands. Venetians would have been very familiar with this image, as the silver lira coin first minted between 1474 and 1476 was stamped with the standing image of Christ holding an orb while raising his hand in blessing.

Christ's raised hand casts a strong shadow on his robe, which adds to the picture's sense of realism. Previtali became particularly interested in the depiction of shadows and transparent materials around 1514. Paintings of this subject by other artists, such as Cima's (Gemäldegalerie, Dresden), also make striking use of both reflections on a transparent crystal and of shadows cast by raised hands.

There is another, earlier work of Christ Blessing by Previtali in the National Gallery, of about 1512--15. Previtali probably painted it in Bergamo shortly after his return from Venice. The two paintings are of the same general type but the orb is not included in the earlier, more decorative, image.

Style: High Renaissance
The Virgin Mary holds the infant Christ close to her, drawing his cheek to her face. The pair are flanked by four saints, but as none of them have specific attributes we can't be sure who they are meant to be. The one holding a book is probably a Franciscan, because he wears their uniform of a brown habit. To the right is a martyr saint who holds a branch of palm, the traditional symbol of martyrdom.

The tender pose of mother and son originally derives from Byzantine icons that show them with their faces pressed together (known as the 'sweetly-kissing' Virgin). This version -- Mary cradling the child, who is partly wrapped in swaddling bands and has his eyes open -- comes from an engraving by Mantegna. The artist did not create many images of the Virgin and Child, and this one was the most significant of them all. It has been identified with a picture Mantegna calls a 'quadretino' (a 'little picture') in a letter to Federico Gonzaga, Marquess of Mantua, in 1491.

Bonsignori was working for the Gonzaga from 1492, like Mantegna before him. An inventory of the possessions of a subsequent marquess, Ludovico III Gonzaga, made in 1510 after his death, mentions an object which by its description seems to be the engraving plate for Mantegna's Madonna. It seems likely, then, that Bonsignori was directly copying an image that he had seen while he was working for the Gonzaga. Bonsignori has reversed Mantegna's composition, showing it as it would be seen on a plate, except, unusually, for the position of the hands.

The composition as a whole -- its horizontal shape, the dark background and the arrangement of the figures in two rows behind a ledge -- derives from Mantegna's invention and is found, for example, in his Presentation of Christ (Gemäldegalerie, Berlin). The format was also copied by Mantegna's brother-in-law, Giovanni Bellini. The plain background would have appealed to Bonsignori who was better known for his portraits and rarely included landscape or architectural backgrounds in his pictures.

Style: Early Renaissance, High Renaissance
This small panel painting of the Virgin and Child was, until its theft in the 1970s, one of the earliest pictures in the National Gallery. Only The Virgin and Child Enthroned, with Scenes of the Nativity and the Lives of the Saints -- a large altarpiece -- is of a similar date.

Probably painted in Tuscany in the thirteenth century, it was inspired by Byzantine painting. The infant Christ rests in the Virgin Mary's left arm and she points at him with her right hand, a famous image known as the Hodegetria, based on a miraculous icon of the Virgin owned by the Hodeon monastery in Constantinople. Although highly stylised, the pair are shown in an affectionate embrace, with Christ's head resting against Mary's cheek; this is an intimate picture of a mother and child. Like Byzantine icons, it is also highly decorative: the Virgin and infant Christ are set against a gilded background, their draperies are modelled in gold highlights and they are shown under a moulded arch with two angels in the upper corners. The letters on either side are Greek and stand for 'Mother of God'.

Byzantine art was hugely influential in medieval Italy, and icons were much revered. This kind of painting had a great impact on artists such as Duccio, and his Virgin and Child with Saint Dominic and Saint Aurea, and Patriarchs and Prophets shows a similarly emotional relationship between Christ and the Virgin.

This panel perhaps once formed part of a diptych, a painting made of two panels which folded together like a book for storage or transportation (like 'The Wilton Diptych'). The panel has hinge marks on the right, and the back is decorated with a cross with triangles and circles at the end of the four arms. The other half might be a panel now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, showing Christ on the Cross: it is the same size, has hinge marks on the left and has the same sort of cross painted on the back. Small diptychs like this were intended to be portable and were used for private devotion.

Many surviving pictures from the Middle Ages remain anonymous. Although the names of various artists have been associated with this painting, it is very difficult to make any satisfactory attribution or even to be sure what district of central Italy it comes from.

Style: Gothic
Against a grey sky threatening snow, the people of Dordrecht are out on the ice. In the foreground, a man with a barrel organ chats to a woman. The sharp pink of her jacket is echoed on the saddle cloth of one of the horses on the left, the vivid colour enlivening the muted browns and greys of the rest of the picture. At her feet, a man propels himself across the frozen river on a strange contraption.

Elsewhere people push sledges, ride in horse-drawn sleighs, carry fishing poles or simply skate, perhaps enjoying the speed compared with rowing a boat on the river. All this activity is watched by the two patient horses on the left, with the last of the dying light catching the coat of the grey.

The view is taken from the north across the river Maas. In the background on the left is the Groothoofdspoort, a watergate which still survives although it was altered in the late seventeenth century. To its right is the Grote Kerk (Great Church) which is largely unchanged today. The painting perhaps derives from a view of Dordrecht in the background of a work by Aelbert Cuyp (National Trust Collection, Ascott, Buckinghamshire) which was probably painted in the 1650s. Although the costumes in the picture are of the 1660s, the picture may have been painted later.

Style: Baroque
Jacob Maris was known primarily as a highly successful painter of Dutch landscapes, but he also painted interiors with people and genre subjects. This small intimate picture was painted in Paris, where he lived from 1865 until he returned to the Netherlands in 1871 following the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War the previous year.

The woman is almost certainly Maris’s wife Catharina Hendrika Horn, whom he married in 1867. Their first child, Guillaume, was born in April 1868, but died in March 1869. A pencil study squared for transfer to the painting, which belonged to the Maris family, shows the child suckling -- unlike the finished picture. In the painting, the woman’s right breast was originally uncovered, but was later painted over, although probably not by Maris.

The picture is painted on mahogany, and built up with smooth glazes, unlike the thick impasto paint of Maris's later work. The pale skin tones of both the woman and the child direct our attention to their interaction. Elsewhere, Maris skilfully contrasts touches and areas of white paint -- for example, the woman’s pearl earring and the crumpled linen covering her lap -- with the dark tones of the room. The delicate still life of flowers on the table perhaps shows the influence of Henri Fantin-Latour, whose work Maris would have seen In Paris.

Style: Realist
Despite the presence of a village in the background, it is not possible to be certain about the location of this pastoral scene. However, the composition is similar to a view of the village of Gisors in Normandy, which Corot painted in October 1873. This picture may be a pared-down view of Gisors, perhaps painted at the same time, but without any of the village’s distinguishing features, notably its distinctive church. The two paintings do have some common elements, however, including willow trees, a water-logged meadow, cows and a cowherd.

This silvery-grey landscape, with hints of pale green and blue, is typical of Corot’s late style, as is the extensive use of white to produce a light tone throughout. Sinuous willow trees are often present in Corot’s paintings. Here, the twisted trunk of the largest tree is partly echoed by the trees behind it, which together form a group that counter-balances the cowherd and his cows.

Style: Barbizon
Images of men and bulls have been found as early as Palaeolithic rock art, including cave paintings in Spain. More recently, bullfights have been a staple of Spanish painting since Goya, whose album of 33 etchings of bullfights, the Tauromaquia (1816), became an important source for Gérôme and Manet in the nineteenth century, and for Picasso in the twentieth.

The Spanish artist Fortuny painted this picture of a victorious bullfighter saluting the crowd while he and his family were living in Granada in southern Spain from 1870 to 1872. Aside from the visual spectacle of bullfights, Fortuny was attracted to traditions that survived in contemporary Spain. This attraction was itself an aspect of costumbrismo, a cultural movement that promoted the literary and artistic portrayal of everyday Spanish life and customs. Initially based in Spain in the late eighteenth and nineteenth century, costumbrismo spread more widely, particularly in the Spanish-speaking Americas, and continued into the twentieth century.

Costumbrismo combined Realism’s focus on actual places and activities with aspects of Romanticism, particularly its emphasis on dramatic action and expression. The publication in 1842 of The Spanish Drawn By Themselves (Los españoles pintados por sí mismos) -- a serialised anthology of ‘types’ depicted in verse, prose and illustrations -- was an early, and influential, example in print. Not surprisingly, costumbrismo was associated with the rise of nationalism in nineteenth-century Spain, which culminated in the formation of the First Spanish Republic (1873--4), just a few years after Fortuny painted this picture.

Fortuny often painted matadors and picadors, who were readily identifiable Spanish 'types' and also a popular subject with foreign purchasers of Spanish art. Although he had previously painted bullrings in Barcelona and Seville, it is not possible to say if we are looking here at a specific bullring or one that he has imagined. However, the painting does show Fortuny’s lively brushwork, which anticipates Impressionism, and his skilful use of strong colours -- for example, the vibrant blood-red of the matador’s cloth, which contrasts with the black bull. These bold colours are tempered by delicate pinks and turquoise, which recall Rococo painting (including early Goya) and Delacroix, who was also an important early influence.

Fortuny has placed us close to the action within the bullring itself, not among the audience, and slightly below the matador, whose raised arm and jubilant face stand out clearly against the bright sky that fills the upper half of the picture. In contrast, the lower half is filled with the aftermath of the bloody fight that has just ended.

Style: Realist
The 4th-century Saint Catherine of Alexandria is shown here with a martyr's palm and her traditional attribute of a wheel on which she was tortured.

The painting is close in style to Garofalo, but the detailing of woodgrain in the wheel, the raised paint on the knuckles and the rounded finger tips are atypical of him.

Style: High Renaissance
The church we are looking into here -- the Cunerakerk -- still towers above the small town of Rhenen in the Netherlands. Bartholomeus van Bassen was an expert in painting church interiors. He signed ‘B. Van. Bassen’ on the bottom of the wooden enclosure around the column on the far left, together with the year he painted the work, ‘1638’.

The column towering out of the wooden enclosure is one of many that dominates the scene, dwarfing the people and the dogs within the church. They support a groin-vaulted ceiling that creates an alternating pattern of light and shadow, drawing our gaze towards the wall-mounted organ on the back wall. Below the organ are two doors that lead to a second space, which indicates that we are looking backwards from the apse. The prominent pulpit on the left column emphasises that this is a Protestant church in which God’s word would be preached from the Bible. Elaborate furnishings were sparse in most post-Reformation churches and the Cunerakerk does not have much decoration, apart from a number of framed inscriptions and heraldic symbols on the columns. The word ‘DOM’ -- from the Latin Dominus, meaning master or lord -- is just visible in the inscription facing us: a reference to God.

Van Bassen was appointed the official city architect of The Hague in the same year he made this; the role no doubt inspired many more of his paintings. In 1629, van Bassen -- a skilled architect as well as painter -- was commissioned by the States of Utrecht to transform the convent of the Cunerakerk into an impressive palace for the exiled Elector Palatine and King of Bohemia, Frederick V, and his wife Elizabeth Stuart. Frederick was known as the ‘Winter King’ for the brevity of his reign. It has been suggested that a painting by van Bassen, The King and Queen of Bohemia dining in Public (Royal Collection, Windsor), reflects some of his designs for the Rhenen palace. Together with the transformation of the convent into a palace, the Cunerakerk became the court chapel of the exiled royals, although it is hard to find evidence of its new function in this painting. Van Bassen did, however, make some changes to the church’s interior here, adding some of his inventions.

Although Rhenen is a small town, the Cunerakerk was well known to medieval pilgrims as it held relics of the obscure but revered Saint Cunera. Before its dedication to Saint Cunera in the eleventh century, the church was dedicated to Saint Peter.

Style: Baroque
A glorious, glowing company of saints and angels surround Christ and his mother, watching as he delicately places a golden crown on her head. This is heaven seen through fifteenth-century eyes. Crowns and haloes shimmer with burnished gold; angels with multi-coloured wings swing censers and make music; ranks of saints in gorgeous colours gesture gracefully to each other or gaze adoringly at the culminating drama of the life of the Virgin -- her coronation as Queen of Heaven.

This huge polyptych was painted for the high altar of the monastery of San Benedetto fuori della Porta Pinti in Florence between 1407 and 1409. It was originally even bigger and more complex: its main panels and parts of the predella are in the National Gallery, but other parts are scattered in collections around the world.

The panels which make up the main tier -- The Coronation of the Virgin, Adoring Saints: Left Main Tier Panel and Adoring Saints: Right Main Tier Panel -- were originally constructed and painted as a single panel. We don't know exactly when it was split into three, although the altarpiece was probably taken apart when San Benedetto was destroyed in the run up to the siege of Florence in 1529. At some point, two vertical bands about seven centimetres wide were lost between the side and main panels. These missing sections have been reconstructed in the structural elements of the modern frame.

In the predella were scenes from the life of Saint Benedict, patron saint of the monastery: we see him admitting Saints Maurus and Placidus into the Benedictine Order and telling Maurus to save Placidus from drowning. A panel showing Benedict's death is now on indefinite loan to the National Gallery, and other panels are in the Pinacoteca Vaticana, Rome and the National Museum, Poznań. The pinnacles at the top showed the Annunciation flanking Christ the Redeemer. There were Old Testament prophets in the pilasters at the sides, and a tier showing Abraham, Noah, Moses and David (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) between the predella and the main panels.

San Benedetto belonged to the Camaldolites, a reformed branch of the Benedictine Order, famous for their strict lifestyle although they lived among great visual riches. The artist, Lorenzo Monaco, was himself a Camaldolite monk, and this painting is a kind of dress rehearsal for his most important surviving work, the great altarpiece for Santa Maria degli Angeli in Florence. Even this smaller and simpler version measures almost 265 by 360 cm.

Unusually, we know quite a lot about why and when this altarpiece was made. The monastery's register records how it was commissioned in 1407 by a Florentine citizen, Luca Pieri Rinieri Berri, who was to pay almost the entire cost. In recompense his name was to be included on the altarpiece -- a few letters of an inscription can be made out on the grey step of dais -- so that he would be remembered in the monks' prayers. The altarpiece was never to be removed from the high altar, on penalty of a fine of 200 gold florins. It was in place by 1409 when the monks moved choir stalls from a side chapel into the main church.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance