Art 222 Labors of the Months Two

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LABORS OF THE MONTHS 2
January 26, 2001

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Medieval Cycles

And God said: Let there be lights made in the firmament of heaven, to divide the day and the night, and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years. Genesis 1:14

In medieval calendars, calendar cycles known as The Labors of the Months were developed, in which each month (or zodiac sign) is associated with a single activity typical of the work of the land. As Emile Mâle noted, the scenes are "simple, serious and close to man's daily life," showing peasants in individual struggle with nature. Although there are similarities in the activities chosen for each month, each location develops its own individual cycle, responsive to its own local ecology. In class we looked at the imagery from Chartres and Amiens, but significant series can be found on every major French cathedral.

	Chartres Cathedral Royal Portal ca. 1155	Christ returns in glory at the end of time, with time represented by the paired zodiac signs and Labors. Details
Amiens Cathedral West facade, ca. 1245.	Quatrefeuilles pairing zodiac signs and labors provide an earthly foundation for the saints in the portal above. Details

Click for Larger Image January

February

The most impressive calendar series we have from a medieval manuscript has to be the elaborate series illuminated by the Limbourg Brothers ca. 1415-17 for Jean, Duc of Berry, in a manuscript known as The Very Rich Hours or the Très riches heures. In these large miniatures, realistic scenes of peasants at work alternate with images of the upper class at play. Each scene takes place in an identifiable location, all properties belonging to the Kings of France in general, and the Duke of Berry in particular. We see a vivid portrait of life in the fifteenth cenetury, and get a perhaps unintentional glimpse of the vast separations between rich and poor in this period.

• Limbourg Brothers, Tres Riches Heures of Duc de Berry, 1415-1417.
• Online for the humanities class at Univ. of Chicago, with explanations of the calendar pages
• Online at the Webmuseum, some French useful
• Part of the Univ. of Champaign-Urbana's archive of books of hours.

Bruegel's Calendar Scenes

The last series we examined in class were the large series of paintings by Pieter Bruegel, dating to about 1565. There are documents about the painter's series of the months, but much dispute about how many pictures were in the cycle. Five paintings remain, and so most scholars imagine that the original series consisted of six paintings, each representing a two-month period.

	The Harvesters 1565 Oil on wood, 118.1 x 160.7 cm Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
	Gloomy Day 1565 Oil on panel, 118 x 163 cm Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
	The Hunters in the Snow (Winter) 1565 Oil on panel, 117 x 162 cm Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Larger versions of these images by Bruegel can be seen online in the WebGallery.

For pertinent websites on calendars, see the Links page.

http://merlin.alleg.edu/employee/a/acarr/art222/jan26b.html
Posted January 28, 2000