For more information about the Huth Hours, please see our post A Calendar Page for January 2014.

Our calendar pages for February contain two scenes of labourers trimming vines, one of the traditional labours for this unpleasant month. In the first scene, below the saints days for February, two men are at work in a wintry landscape, and appear to be appropriately bundled against the cold.  The following folio continues the listing of feasts for this month. In the lower roundel, beneath two fish for the zodiac sign Pisces, another chilly-looking labourer is carrying a basket of trimmings through fields in which the remains of a snowstorm can be seen.

Calendar page for February, with a roundel miniature of two men at work trimming vines, from the Huth Hours, Netherlands (Bruges or Ghent?), c. 1480, Add MS 38126, f. 2v

Calendar page for February, with a roundel miniature of Piscese and a man carrying vine-trimmings in a wintry landscape, from the Huth Hours, Netherlands (Bruges or Ghent?), c. 1480, Add MS 38126, f. 3r

- Sarah J Biggs

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