Calendar Miniatures from a Book of Hours

Simon Bening

about 1550

Tempera colors and gold paint, Tempera Colors, Gold paint

J. Paul Getty Museum

Two men are working in a rural landscape with thatched-roof buildings and bare trees. One man uses a scythe to gather branches, while the other appears to be cutting wood. Simon Bening painted this pair of miniatures back-to-back on a single leaf of a book of hours. The miniatures originally appeared at the bottom of two calendar pages that listed church holidays. Each page was devoted to a particular month, and each miniature depicts an activity associated with the month. In these miniatures, Bening showed that landscape backgrounds, with their distinctive weather conditions, could be even more evocative of a particular month than the activities themselves. Despite their small size, the scenes are as ambitious in scope and composition as independent paintings of considerably larger dimensions. Admiri