Sometimes the calendar images in a book of hours departs from the more common labors of the month. This is the case with the Morgan Library’s Da Costa Hours image for October. The more common labors for October in books of hours include ploughing and sowing in colder climates, transferring the new wine into casks and…
September from the Da Costa Hours
The traditional labors of September shown in books of hours are harvesting and treading grapes in warmer regions and ploughing and sowing (and sometimes, threshing) in colder climates. In this detail of the September calendar image from the Morgan Library’s Da Costa Hours (MS M.399, fol. 10v), in the foreground a man ploughs with the…
August from the Da Costa Hours
This is a lovely but also fairly traditional book of hours calendar image for August from The Morgan Library’s MS M.399, fol. 9v The Da Costa Hours, showing the customary labor of August, threshing grain, as well as the last reaping of grain. In the front on the left, a woman is finding the…
Ötzi the Iceman’s Last Meal
Ötzi is the name given to a 5,300-year-old European glacier mummy, the frozen remains of a hunter from the Copper age. He is thought to have been about 45 years old when he died, probably from blood loss after an arrow to the should, some 5,300 years ago. When he died Ötzi was wearing a…
1867 Stonehenge Pictures
The image above, which was recently made public by the photo research company TimePix, is from 1867, and is part of the first known photographic sequence ever taken of Stonehenge. (There are older individual photographs, in the Royal Collection.) It’s from a book called Plans and Photographs of Stonehenge, released by the U.K.’s Ordnance Survey and…
July from the Da Costa Hours
This image shows the common labor of July, haying, from the Morgan Library’s Da Costa Hours, MS M.399, fol. 8v. In the front on the right, two men are using scythes (note the long handles) to mow the grass. On the left is a wagon (or haywain) with a team of draft horses. I consulted…
Dorothy Dunnett Game of Kings Ebook Sale
There is a temporary sale on the ebook version of Game of Kings by Dorothy Dunnett. This is the first volume of her six-part historical novel series The Lymond Chronicles, for a mere $1.99. The Lymond Chronicles (or The Chronicles of Lymond) are set during the late 1500s, overlapping the end of the reign of…
June from the Da Costa Hours
The occupation for June in this Simon Bening calendar image from the Da Costa Hours (Morgan Library MS. M.399, fol. 7v) is sheep-shearing. It’s pretty much exactly what you’d see today, though electric clippers are more common these days. Bening also depicted sheep shearing for the June calendar page in the Golf Book in a strikingly…
May from the Da Costa Hours
This Da Costa Hours May calendar page illuminated by Simon Bening of Ghent (1483/84–1561) is from the Da Costa hours in the Morgan Library (MS M.399, fol. 6v). It is very similar to the May calendar page that Simon Bening created for the British Library’s Golf Book. Just as in the Golf Book calendar page…
April from the Da Costa Hours
This illustration for the calendar page for April (MS M.399, fol. 5v) from The Morgan Library’s Da Costa Hours is a somewhat atypical scene for April, in terms of what most books of hours depict for the April calendar; the labors of April include, most often, scenes of courtship or, or the verdant spring in…