Pisa Baptistery - an Italian year
Labours of the months series
The labours of the months are shown each side of the main, east door to the baptistery, placed between two finely ornamented columns and occupying tight rectangles with definite frames. What's interesting about this set is the apparent classical Roman influence on some of the themes. We know that later on, the Pisanos used classical sarcophagi that had been brought to the Camposanto as models for their pulpits. It's also intriguing that while about half the months follow the conventional schema and show immediately recognisable forms, there are a couple of months which seem quite inscrutable and don't relate to the usual subjects at all.
Each month is denoted by a two-letter abbreviation cut into the frame above it.
April holds a green branch and a goblet.
August picks fruit from a tree; September shows winemaking, with a barrel ready to be filled; and October, ploughing - an image which strangely we don't often find in the French examples.
The next two figures I find very strange. January
seems to be a Roman holding his hand out to an altar with flames - almost
like Mucius Scaevola, who burned his right hand in the fire to demonstrate
his lack of fear. Is this a start of year sacrifice, or is this the Pisan
artist's classicising way of showing the man at the fire warming himself,
usually a February figure in France?
And then what is February doing? There's a date palm in the background and water flowing in front of it, and we see a man who has pulled his clothes up above the knee to paddle in the water. I have no idea what this is doing here at all.
Back to the mainstream tradition with June and July. July shows threshing - that's a month earlier than in the northern examples - while June shows the harvest, the corn standing high on the right hand side. There's a slightly schematic feeling to these two panels.
March is another very odd panel. A man sitting on a chair, but I can't work out what he is doing.
April, May, June, ascending. May, as usual, is riding out on a horse, and for once there is a background, a fine tree bursting into leaf.
The winter months, with September's vintage, the ploughing in October, and the pig-killing in November. Again the images seem almost diagrammatic, with the pig seeming to hang in mid-air and the oxen floating in space. This seems reminiscent of some of the Romanesque bronze doors in Italy, for instance at San Zeno, Verona, where figures are surrounded by void and their positioning is purely a matter of artistic decision, not realism.
Back to the list of images of labours of the months