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SOURCE: “In Due Season: Farm Work in the Medieval Calendar Tradition,” in Agriculture in the Middle Ages: Technology, Practice, and Representation, edited by Del Sweeney, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995, pp. 309-36.
In the following essay, Henisch studies the visual depiction of agricultural labor in the calendars of the Middle Ages.
When a medieval artist was told to illustrate a calendar, he knew exactly what he was expected to provide. It made no difference whether he was working in wood or in stone, tracing the design for a stained-glass window, or brushing gold onto a sheet of vellum. He reached into his store of patterns and pulled out, not twelve scenes, or emblems, one for each month of the year, but twenty-four. One illustration showed a characteristic occupation for the month, and the other displayed the month's dominant zodiac sign. The artist then proceeded to group his pictures in...
This section contains 6,625 words (approx. 23 pages at 300 words per page) |
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