Featured here are the Labors of the Months, the section illustrating the various activities undertaken by the Duke's court and his peasants according to the month of the year. Most of the illustrations show one of the Duke's castles in the background, and each are accompanied by a sun carrying Phoebus beneath an archway depicting the appropriate zodiac signs. February: A typical winter's day. Some peasants warm themselves by the fire, another peasant chops wood, and still another goes to market.
March: Sowing the field. May: Young nobles riding in a procession. June: Harvest. Explore our selection of fine art prints, all custom made to the highest standards, framed or unframed, and shipped to your door. Pay by Credit Card. Pay with PayPal. Click for Delivery Estimates. Search The Public Domain Review. A cut away picture of a peasant's home shows a couple sitting by the fire with their pants and skirt hitched up in order to warm their legs. As in the image for January we see them with their hands raised towards the fire in a gesture of hand warming.
A better dressed woman in a blue dress is shyly looking away as she too discreetly lifts her dress only half way up to warm herself. To the right a fourth person wrapped in a shawl is hurrying towards the house and its warm fire.
Quotation: John Millar, on the "Causes of the freedom acquired by the labouring people in the modern nations of Europe. The situation, however, of these bond-men, and the nature of the employment in which they were usually engaged, had a tendency to procure them a variety of privileges from their master, by which, in a course of ages, their condition was rendered more comfortable, and they were advanced to higher degrees of consideration and rank. As the peasants belonging to a single person could not be conveniently maintained in his house, so in order to cultivate his lands to advantage, it was necessary that they should be sent to a distance, and have a fixed residence in different parts of his estate.
A very little experience would show that no efforts of that kind could be effectual; and that the only means of exciting the industry of the peasants would be to offer them a reward for the work which they performed.
Thus, beside the ordinary maintenance allotted to the slaves, they frequently obtained a small gratuity, which, by custom, was gradually converted into a regular hire; and, being allowed the enjoyment and disposal of that subject, they were at length understood to be capable of having separate property. After the master came to reside at a distance from the bulk of his servants, and had embraced the salutary policy of bribing them, instead of using compulsion, in order to render them active in their employment, he was less apt to be provoked by their negligence; and as he had seldom occasion to treat them with severity, the ancient dominion which he exercised over their lives was at length entirely lost by disuse.
When a slave had been for a long time engaged in a particular farm, and had become acquainted with that particular culture which it required, he was so much the better qualified to continue in the management of it for the future; and it was contrary to the interest of the master that he should be removed to another place, or employed in labour of a different kind. By degrees, therefore, the peasants were regarded as belonging to the stock upon the ground, and came to be uniformly disposed of as a part of the estate which they had been accustomed to cultivate.
As these changes were gradual, it is difficult to ascertain the precise period at which they were completed. The continual disorders which prevailed in the western part of Europe, for ages after it was first over-run by the German nations, prevented for a long time the progress of arts among the new inhabitants.
The snow has melted and the peasants go about preparing the soil for the spring planting. The Chateau was a formidable defensive structure with multiple defensive walls and was probably at its height when owned by the Duc de Berry in the early 15th century.
To the left we can see the barbican tower the gatehouse , in the center the clocktower with its external privy, and to the right a tower with a protective golden dragon on its roof.
On the slopes below the castle we can see various peasnt activities: at the top left we can see a shepherd and his dog looking after a flock of sheep; below this are three peasants pruning the vines; to their right is a vineyard which has already been prepared for the spring growing season; at the far right is a peasant sifting a bag of seed corn; and in the foreground we see a peasant ploughing a field with 2 oxen.
Given its prominent place in the picture and the extraordinary detail with which it is painted, the Limburg brothers were keen to show how important agriculture was to the peasant economy and how dependent upon it for their upkeep were the castles and chateaux of the aristocracy. Quotation: Adam Smith on the greater productivity brought about by the the division of labour and its social consequences. Every body must be sensible how much labour is abridged and facilitated by the application of proper machinery.
By means of the plough two men, with the assistance of three horses, will cultivate more ground than twenty could do with the spade. A miller and his servant, with a wind or water mill, will at their ease grind more corn than eight men could do, with the severest labour, by hand mills.
To grind corn in a hand mill was the severest work to which the antients commonly applied their slaves, and to which they seldome condemned them unlessl when they had been guilty of some very great fault. A hand mill, however, is a very ingenuous machine which greatly facilitates labour, and by which a great deal of more work can be performed than when the corn is either to be beat in a mortar, or with the bare hand, unassisted by any machinery, to be rubbed into pouder between two hard stones, as is the practice not only of all barbarous nations but of some remote provinces in this country.
It was the division of labour which probably gave occasion to the invention of the greater part of those machines, by which labour is so much facilitated and abridged. When the whole force of the mind is directed to one particular object, as in consequence of the division of labour it must be, the mind is more likely to discover the easiest methods of attaining that object than when its attention is dissipated among a great variety of things. He was probably a farmer who first invented the original, rude form of the plough.
The improvements which were afterwards made upon it might be owing sometimes to the ingenuity of the plow wright when that business had become a particular occupation, and sometimes to that of the farmer. Scarce any of them are so complex as to exceed what might be expected from the capacity of the latter.
The drill plow, the most ingenious of any, was the invention of a farmer. Meek, D. Raphael and P. Stein, vol. The way that these two painters modelled their figures, and organized the spatial planes of their paintings through the use of simple linear perspective , was imitated and taken to a new level by the Limbourg brothers.
The Sienese School of Painting , as the upholder of the Byzantine tradition of Gothic art , would have been another influence absorbed by the brothers. Common to most Books of Hours, this part consists of a standard calendar marked with church feasts and saints' days.
It is usually illustrated, but the twelve full-page miniature paintings which decorate the months in the Tres Riches Heures are regarded as the most exquisite and original feature of the entire work. The majority of the images - featuring some of the greatest genre paintings of the Middle Ages - feature one of the Duc de Berry's castles in the background, as well as scenes of both leisure and work which characterize the different months.
Above each painting is a hemisphere showing the signs and degrees of the zodiac, the numbers and days of the month, as well as details from the ecclesiastical lunar calendar. January This painting illustrates the giving of New Years' gifts. Jean de Berry himself is visible wearing a vivid blue robe. February This shows winter in a peasant village.
Peasants warm themselves by the fire, while in the background daily life goes on as normal. March This scene features early sowing and ploughing. The chateau in the background is Lusignan, a favourite of the Duc's.
April Here, Spring arrives. A newly engaged couple are exchanging rings flanked by friends and family. The chateau shown is that of Dourdan. May This painting illustrates a May pageant. The chateau known as the Palais de la Cite is in the background. July This depicts sheep are being sheared and hay being reaped. August Here, noblemen are hawking with falcons. Peasants are harvesting and swimming in the background.
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