Exhibitions & Fairs

We are delighted and honoured to present a digital publication by the distinguished American art historian and leading expert on medieval art, Dr. Barbara Drake Boehm (Paul and Jill Ruddock Curator Emerita of the Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters at the Metropolitan Museum of Art). The central question of this publication is: How are medieval women portrayed, or how did they present themselves through the books they collected? How do we perceive them today?

How do you measure time and translate it into images? Already the earliest advanced civilizations introduced the signs of the zodiac for these purposes. And, still in ancient times, Imperial Rome added another circle of images that ran in parallel throughout the year: the Occupations or Labours of the Months. Each of the twelve months was assigned a characteristic activity, mostly agricultural. The Middle Ages combined both pictorial traditions. In early medieval manuscripts, on the portals (Chartres, Paris, Reims, Amiens) and in the rose windows (Lausanne) of Gothic cathedrals, but also, for example, among the reliefs decorating the Fontana Maggiore in Perugia, we find individual figures performing a monthly task with a representative tool, together with the respective sign of the zodiac.