Posts in category: Renaissance

The young man in the new BLOG POST The Labours of the Months: October, seems startled… he gestures to something in front of him, and turns to look over his shoulder as if talking to someone outside the picture. He is sitting on a rock but appears to be about to start ploughing. “Make sure the lines are straight” his foreman calls “use the simple wood and metal plough I gave you, push it hard on the ground, move it to either side to make an open shallow furrow. Our patrone hasn’t decided yet what we will plant, but whatever it is, it will look nice in February…” https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/italian-venetian-the-labours-of-the-months-october and https://www.teachercurator.com/art/the-labours-of-the-months-february/

This small painting is one of 12 small pictures that together show the ‘Labours of the Months’ – the activities that take place each month throughout the farming year. They were meant to decorate the recessed panels of a pair of doors, and seem to have been planned in pairs with the figures facing each other. This set of painted Doors combine simplicity in execution and extravagance in visual effect! The paintings, very small in size, about 13.6 x 10.6 cm, were achieved in vivid, bright, luxurious colours, like ultramarine blue for the sky, strong vermilion and red lake for the clothing, with rich greens and yellows in the landscape. The restricted and repeated use of colour gives the group of little pictures a charming, decorative simplicity. All but one of the scenes show a man working outdoors on what appears to be the estate of a large villa, seen in several of the paintings, at the foot of the distant blue mountains. The small panel paintings in the National Gallery are rare and special. They document life in the Veneto area, with the peasant activities and duties to their land. They also depict a vivid landscape, romanticized even then, from bare and covered with snow, to rich and fertile, to autumnal, covered with fallen leaves. https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/italian-venetian-the-labours-of-the-months-january#painting-group-info

The Labours of the Months had a role in highlighting authority and privilege, hard work and occasionally, small, everyday pleasures. They are often perceived as a link between the work of man, the seasons of the year and God’s ordering of the Universe. As a theme, it recurred in the sculptural decoration of cathedrals and churches across Europe, in illuminated manuscripts like the popular Books of Hours, palace frescoes and rarely, panel painting. The Trentino Fresco Panels at Torre Aquila for example, present trained and obedient peasants busy with their seasonal activities, but dominated by the local aristocracy who seem to only care for their idler activities. (I presented the eleven surviving Torre Aquila frescoes in 2020. Please Check https://www.teachercurator.com/?s=torre%20aquila&cat=plus-5-results)

For a PowerPoint on The Labours of the Months at the National Gallery in London, please… Check HERE!

Another smell of autumn / sweet sweet smell / of Concord grapes / warming ripening/ ready to burst with flavor / strong urgent smell / lured me closer/ spreading outward /from the makeshift arbor / a plume twenty feet wide / enticing, coaxing / me to linger /luxuriate in its aroma smile at the memory / of other pickings / long ago / Sweet fruit / high above me, / out of reach up in the canopy / formed by wire and bush… lovely and short, by Raymond Foss, a lawyer from New Hampshire who writes poetry in his spare time… a wonderful introduction for my new BLOG POST on The Labours of the Months: September. https://cindydyer.wordpress.com/2007/08/01/harvesting-grapes-812007/

A man in the National Gallery painting sits beneath a tree inform us the Renaissance experts in the London Museum, through which a vine has been trained. A large bunch of red grapes hangs from a leafy stem. He uses both hands to squeeze the juice from another bunch into a wooden vat on the ground at his feet. The grape juice will be turned into wine and possibly stored in the barrel we see being made in an earlier scene. This is a fitting scene for any painting depicting the Labours of the Months and particularly the scene representing September. https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/italian-venetian-the-labours-of-the-months-september

Europeans of the Renaissance period created, in various Art media, Calendars of specific religious events celebrated every month of the year. These Calendars were often embellished with scenes of seasonal, agricultural activities and popular scenes of the life of the elite courtiers as well. These iconographic scenes are traditionally called the ‘Labours of the Months’. They can be seen in manuscripts like Psalters, Breviaries, and Books of Hours, sculptural decorations of Cathedrals, and like in the case we explore this year, a set of decorated doors for a Venetian Palazzo. Their artistic rendering and content varies depending on the date, location, and purpose of each artwork

A typical Calendar depicting agricultural Activities present, often but not always, scenes of Feasting for January, Sitting by the fire for February, Pruning trees or digging for March, Planting and enjoying the country or picking flowers for April, Hawking and courtly love for May, Hay harvest for June,  Wheat harvest for July, Wheat threshing for August, Grape Harvest for September,  Ploughing or sowing for October,  Gathering acorns for pigs for November and Killing pigs or baking for December.

The small painting in London presenting September as a man squeezing the juice from a bunch of grapes is part of a special set of Renaissance painted Doors. The unknown artist who created this painting used vivid, bright, luxurious colours, like reds, blues, white and green. He combined simplicity in execution and extravagance in visual effect, creating a charming decorative effect.

For a PowerPoint on the painting under focus at the National Gallery in London, please… Check HERE!

As an introduction to my new BLOG POST The Labours of the Months: July, let’s read Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts’s poem on July… I am for the open meadows, / Open meadows full of sun, / Where the hot bee hugs the clover, / The hot breezes drop and run.    /    I am for the uncut hayfields / Open to the cloudless blue,— / For the wide unshadowed acres / Where the summer’s pomps renew;    /    Where the grass-tops gather purple, / Where the oxeye daisies thrive, / And the mendicants of summer / Laugh to feel themselves alive;    /    Where the hot scent steams and quivers, / Where the hot saps thrill and stir, / Where in leaf-cells’ green pavilions / Quaint artificers confer;    /    Where the bobolinks are merry, / Where the beetles bask and gleam, / Where above the powdered blossoms / Powdered moth-wings poise and dream;    /    Where the bead-eyed mice adventure / In the grass-roots green and dun. / Life is good and love is eager / In the playground of the sun! https://discoverpoetry.com/poems/july-poems/

The Labours of the Months had a role in highlighting authority and privilege, hard work, and occasionally, small, everyday pleasures. They are often perceived as a link between the work of man, the seasons of the year, and God’s ordering of the Universe. The Trentino Fresco Panels at Torre Aquila in Northern Italy for example, present trained and obedient peasants busy with their seasonal activities, but dominated by the local aristocracy who seem to only care for their idler activities. (I presented the eleven surviving Torre Aquila frescoes in 2020. Please check https://www.teachercurator.com/?s=torre%20aquila&cat=plus-5-results)

Starting the 1^st of January 2021 and for every month so far, we “take a trip” to the National Gallery in London and “study” a small picture (there are twelve such pictures), “painted on canvas and then… glued to a wooden panel. It is possible that (these twelve pictures) were made to decorate the recessed panels of a pair of doors! The paintings seem to have been planned in pairs with the figures facing each other and are currently displayed in two frames in groups of six. They show the ‘labours of the months’ – the rural activities that take place each month throughout the year.” https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/italian-venetian-the-labours-of-the-months-january#painting-group-info

For the Month of July, we have a copious outdoors scene. National Gallery experts believe that this small painting presents July and shows a man (as he) threshes grain from the corn husks and stalks of straw. He holds the corn on a wooden block and strikes it with his wooden flail. The weather is warm and the man is barefoot with no hat on his head. He is a little older than the labourers in the other pictures – some streaks of grey appear in his beard. The depicted man kneels outside a small brick building with an overhanging roof supported on two posts. Perhaps it is the same building in which the elderly man sits in the representation of January. At the foot of the blue mountains in the distance, we see a fine villa, to which this farmland perhaps belongs.

For a PowerPoint on The Labours of the Months at the National Gallery in London, please… Check HERE!

What is so rare as a day in June? / Then, if ever, come perfect days; / Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune, / And over it softly her warm ear lays: / Whether we look, or whether we listen, / We hear life murmur, or see it glisten; / Every clod feels a stir of might, / An instinct within it that reaches and towers, / And, groping blindly above it for light, / Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers; / The flush of life may well be seen / Thrilling back over hills and valleys; / The cowslip startles in meadows green. / The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice, / And there’s never a leaf nor a blade too mean / To be some happy creature’s palace; / The little bird sits at his door in the sun, / Atilt like a blossom among the leaves, / And lets his illumined being o’errun / With the deluge of summer it receives; / His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings, / And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings; / He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest,— / In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best? Writes back in the 19^th century James Russell Lowell… and further back, in the 15^th century, an anonymous painter creates The Labours of the Months: June! https://discoverpoetry.com/poems/june-poems/

The Labours of the Months is a theme that frequently occurs during the Late Medieval-Renaissance Period Art. It attracts our attention in sculptural pieces adorning Churches and Cathedrals of the time, striking Vitreaux Windows, amazingly colourful manuscripts, and paintings, monumental, like the eleven surviving panels in Torre Aquila I presented in 2020 (check: https://www.teachercurator.com/?s=torre%20aquila&cat=plus-5-results), or small, like the paintings in the National Gallery, in London, we explore in 2021… month by month… https://archive.org/details/labormonth00webs/page/n9/mode/2up Webster, James Carson – 1905-1989, The labors of the months in antique and medieval art to the end of the twelfth century, 1938, Evanston, Ill., Northwestern University,     and      https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/italian-venetian-the-labours-of-the-months-january

For The Labours of the Months: June, we have an outdoor scene. “A barefoot young man sits holding a sheaf of corn he has cut in one hand and his scythe in the other. The sleeves of his blue jacket are rolled up and a straw hat shades his face, suggesting that this little painting represents one of the summer months.” The National Gallery of Art experts “think it may be June when grain crops are harvested in northern Italy, where this picture was painted.” https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/italian-venetian-the-labours-of-the-months-june

For a PowerPoint on The Labours of the Months at the National Gallery in London, please… Check HERE!

Pink, small, and punctual, / Aromatic, low, / Covert in April, / Candid in May,     /     Dear to the moss, / Known by the knoll, / Next to the robin / In every human soul.     /     Bold little beauty, / Bedecked with thee, / Nature forswears / Antiquity. Writes Emily Dickinson, but for The Labours of the Months: May small painting in the National Gallery in London, the feeling is different.  https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/may-flower/

Starting the 1^st of January 2021 and for every month so far, I “travel” to the National Gallery in London and present one, out of twelve, small picture, “painted on canvas and then… glued to a wooden panel. It is possible that (these twelve pictures) were made to decorate the recessed panels of a pair of doors. The paintings seem to have been planned in pairs with the figures facing each other and are currently displayed in two frames in groups of six. They show the ‘labours of the months’ – the rural activities that take place each month throughout the year.” This set of painted Doors combine simplicity in execution and extravagance in visual effect! The paintings, very small in size, about 13.6 x 10.6 cm, were achieved in vivid, bright, luxurious colours, like “ultramarine blue for the sky, strong vermilion and red lake for the clothing, with rich greens and yellows in the landscape. The restricted and repeated use of colour gives the group of little pictures a charming, decorative simplicity. All but one of the scenes show a man working outdoors on what appears to be the estate of a large villa, seen in several of the paintings, at the foot of the distant blue mountains.”     https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/italian-venetian-the-labours-of-the-months-january#painting-group-info

The panel that represents the month of May, according to the National Gallery experts, “is the most puzzling picture of the series.” Observing the picture’s composition the viewer will see a seated young man, he seems alert and ready to stand up, holding “two rods, with one crossing the other at the top.” He is simply dressed, barefoot but wearing a broad-rimed straw hat, looking, as if he is expecting a nod, coming from someone straight in front of him, to continue the task he is planning to finish. “ It looks as though (the young man) might be making a supporting frame for vegetables or fruit,” the experts suggest, as there seems to be “a tradition in Italy for one of the spring months to be represented by a youth holding crossed branches, often in bud…” ttps://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/italian-venetian-the-labours-of-the-months-may

Whatever our Venetian young man is about to do… Whether or not this is the correct attribution… Enjoy an unpretentious Renaissance painting and Best Wishes for the Month of May!!!

For a PowerPoint on The Labours of the Months: May at the National Gallery in London, please… Check HERE!