november and december

The Maestro Venceslao's November and December, dated around 1400, is a fragment from a calendar cycle that is among the earliest surviving examples of secular pictorial series in Italian painting. Calendar cycles depicting the months and their characteristic activities — agricultural labor, aristocratic pursuits, seasonal pastimes — were among the most important secular decorative programs of the medieval and early Renaissance periods, surviving in manuscripts (like the Très Riches Heures) and in fresco cycles. The Italian calendar tradition, associated with the courts of northern Italy, provided painters with the opportunity to depict daily life, landscape, and seasonal change in ways that would later feed into the development of genre painting and landscape.

The master employs the elegant linearity and refined color of the north Italian International Gothic tradition. Figures are set within seasonal landscapes that show a new interest in natural observation and atmospheric effects. The court milieu from which these images derive is reflected in the elegant costume of the depicted figures.