The labours of the months
Internet resources
You don't have to travel around Europe to see some fine examples of this topic. There are quite a few resources on the internet, illustrating the diverse forms that the subject takes - including manuscripts, stained glass, carvings, wall paintings, and even terracotta.
- The Sforza Hours, 1490 - an Italian manuscript shows some lively scenes. This page on the British Library site shows the month of October; hunting in the foreground, and in the background, the vine press at work. Go the the 'turning the pages' project and you can see other images from the book (you need the Shockwave plug-in) as well as other manuscripts, from Anglo~Saxon art to Jane Austen.
- The Da Costa hours of 1515, in the Pierpont Morgan Library. This manuscript was produced in Bruges, and has a dinstictively northern flavour. There are more scenes featuring livestock, and also flax beating – cloth making was a major trade in the Low Countries at the time. The naturalistic full page miniatures by Simon Bening show entire landscapes, full of typical activities for the month, not just the single symbol of earlier treatments of the theme.
- A series of stained glass roundels in the Victoria & Albert Museum shows the labours of the months. This pdf is designed for schools but contains a couple of good pictures. The glass is of the Norwich school and dates from about 1480-1500. Here we see a man sowing the field, and another man in a vineyard with baskets full of grapes behind him. You might like to consider whether we can really call this the 'labours' of the months if he isn't doing any real work. A later image is Luca della Robbia's April, showing a youth trimming the vines - the grisaille technique and the fine range of blues that decorate the tile make a stunning work, all the more when you read about how the climatic conditions and length of daylight are schematically shown in della Robbia's tiles.
- Simon Knott's excellent Norfolk Churches site has a page on St Mary, Burnham Deepdale, with an unusually early representation of the theme - a Romanesque Labours of the Months font. Simon really knows his stuff and I unhesitatingly recommend his two sites (he has another one on Suffolk Churches) to anyone interested in English churches over the ages.
- A roundel showing April from the Labours of the Months, in St George's Church, Tombland, Norwich, again on Simon Knott's marvellous site.
- Painted labours of the months at Easby, Yorkshire, on a fine site dedicated to medieval mural painting in English churches.
- Mudejar paintings of the labours of the months on the wooden ceiling of the cathedral of Teruel, Spain (site in Spanish with many photographs). This is a marvellous work with paintings of kings, mythical animals, tradesmen, and the labours of the months - well worth investigating.
- The Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry. What's nice in this manuscript is a very individual take on the traditional forms. For instance in February we see not the man in furs in front of the hearth, but a woman sitting down and lifting her skirt up naughtily to toast her calves at the fire. The Limbourg brothers alter the theme to show a lady en deshabille – a little touch of amusement flickers here. And the pig killing scene is nicely altered to a wild boar hunt in order to show not the peasant's life, but the aristocratic pleasures of winter.
- Benedetto Antelami's work at Parma is vivid and robust. Unusually, these sculptures are free-standing, and not part of any architectural framework - perhaps that gives them some of their lifelike quality.
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