3-043-671 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

February Calendar Page: Working in a Vineyard: Pisces; Spinola Hours, about 1510-1520. Additional Info: Most books of hours open with a calendar of the succession of church holidays, listing saints' days and other feast days in black and singling out the most important in red. The Spinola Hours' calendar pages are particularly lavish, combining a frieze in monochrome, scenes in roundels, a landscape featuring an activity associated with the month, called the Labor of the Month, at the bottom, and a zodiacal sign. The calendar is the only part of a book of hours decorated primarily with secular scenes. On the bottom of this page, for the month of February, a peasant carries a bundle of sticks in an expansive landscape while others plow the vineyard, all bundled up to ward off the winter cold.