Medieval manuscripts blog

01 August 2012

A Calendar Page for August 2012

For more details on calendar pages or the Hours of Joanna of Castile, please see the entry for January 2012

Add 18852 ff. 8v-9

Calendar pages for August, from the Hours of Joanna of Castile, Netherlands (Bruges), between 1496 and 1506, Additional 18852, ff. 8v-9

The important work of the wheat harvest continues in the August calendar pages; there seems no place for leisurely springtime entertainments (such as drinking in a garden or flirting on horseback) in these two scenes of demanding labour.  Three men, stripped to the bare essentials of clothing, are threshing wheat on the left, inside a barn with a broken roof.  On the right, a female figure - for Virgo, the virgin - overlooks a group loading the wheat grains into sacks, which appear very heavy indeed.

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