Getty Museum
Calendar Miniatures from a Book of Hours
Creator
Simon BeningFlemish Illuminator · 1483–1561
All works by this person →One of the most celebrated painters of Flanders in the 1500s, Simon Bening was hailed by Portuguese art critic Francisco da Hollanda as the greatest master of illumination in all of Europe. In addition to producing books for powerful aristocrats such as Cardinal Albrecht of Brandenburg, Bening worked for a group of international royal patrons including Emperor Charles V and Don Fernando, the Infan
More on Getty ULAN- Date
- about 1550
- Medium
- Tempera colors and gold paint
- Culture
- Flemish
- Department
- Manuscripts
- Institution
- Getty Museum
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. Admiring these scenes as independent paintings, a previous owner of the cutting framed it and hung it on the wall like any other landscape painted on canvas or wood.
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