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October from Walters W. 425
Walters W. 425 calendar pages for October, f. 9v and the primary image for the labor of October, Walters W. 425 f. 10r, both have greenery in their marginalia, though f. 9v also includes some striking blossoms, including a Heart’s Ease or Pansy, and a flower that looks very much like a Chrysanthemum, and one that might be a Zinnia. There’s also a surprising realistic moth at the bottom right. There’s a blue Pansy on the left, something that looks a bit like a Zinnia or possibly another Chrsyanthemum, and the moth. Notice the shadows under the orange flower petals, and under the moth, making them both look three dimensional. The October…
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October from the Hours of Henry VIII
This October labor from the Morgan Library’s Hours of Henry the VIII is actually two labors; on the left, a nattily dressed man in a hat, vest, stockings and shoes is sowing seeds, while on the right another man is ploughing the filed with a team of horses. The crop being sowed is almost certainly a variety of winter wheat, destined to be harvested in summer. The wheat sprouts before the snow falls, and continues, somewhat somnolently, to grow under its winter blanket of snow. The man with with the seeds is scatteringly, rather than planting in rows. You can see a sack with additional seeds on the ground behind…
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October from the Da Costa Hours
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 barrels for aging in warmer wine-growing areas, or even, a late harvest of grapes in the warmer Mediterranean climates, which is one of the labors in this image from the Morgan Library’s MS M.399, fol. 11v, the October calendar image from the Da Costa Hours. The Morgan Library’s Da Costa Hours calendar image for October…
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Très Riches Heures for October
In this calendar image for the month of October from the Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry (f. 10v) the labor of the month is sowing the winter grain. This is one of the images that was left uncompleted when Jean Duc de Berry died in 1416. The original artists responsible for most of the image in this book of hours, the Limbourg brothers, also died. The manuscript passed to King Charles VII, the Duke’s brother, and the image for the October calendar was finished by another artist. In the warmer parts of Europe, the wine regions, October marked the month when the grapes harvested in September were put…
