Part 9: October and November Pages
This page was not made by the Limbourg brothers but was rather made in the 1440s based on the fashion for short, neutral-colored tunics worn by the people strolling the Seine in the background (Château de Chantilly). Behind them stands the Louvre Palace, which was heavily renovated by Charles V, the duke of Berry’s brother, in the 1360s. He increased fortifications, enclosed the main courtyard, and beautified it with elaborate chimneys, turrets, and pinnacles. As with Louis XIV hundreds of years later, Charles V understood the significance of architecture as a political statement. Expanding a royal residence just outside the heart of the medieval capital (Île de la Cité) as he did was intended to show strength and stability. It was an open display of the power of the monarchy.
As mentioned above, fashionable pedestrians stroll along the Seine. The main scene takes place across the river in the foreground of the piece, which depicts the preparation of soil for the sowing of seeds. A mounted farmer dragging a moldboard across the ground to till the soil. He waves a whip into the air in an effort to frighten the birds munching on the seeds dropped by the peasant in the bottom right corner. This perhaps explains their expressions of frustration. Behind them in the middle ground stands a scarecrow with a drawn bow. Deterring birds from grazing on seeds sown in prepared soil was a major challenge faced by farmers. If we think back to the February page, this issue was made all the more difficult by the presence of dovecotes, which concentrated huge groups of birds near agricultural fields. Although not pictured here, landowners had the freedom to build dovecotes wherever they felt would attract more birds (doves and pigeons). As with castles, dovecotes were a constant reminder of who had control of the land upon which peasants worked.
The next page, the November page, depicts truffle hunting. Pigs were used to sniff out the prized fungus when it was in season; this is a method employed to this day. Until relatively recently, pigs were not the immobile, rotund, fleshy animals that we know and love today. They also were not kept perpetually in pigsties to roll around in mud. They instead were closer to wild boars in the sense that they were hairy, robust creatures who were allowed to graze in woodlands. This harkens back to permission of use of land. If you remember, the open-field system involved three rotating fields, common grounds to permit grazing, and often woodlands. The latter was used by the landowner to hunt but it contained an essential material: wood. Landowners would allow their tenants use of the woodlands for wood and for grazing but with strict regulations and stipulations. Pigs were permitted to graze so long that they did not infringe on the wild game population. Other than truffle hunting, pigs were a key source of meat for peasants because they were easy and cheap to keep and produced large litters.
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