Hall of the Months at the Palazzo Schifanoia
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Salone dei Mesi ("Hall of the Months")[1] is a cycle of frescos by Cosimo Tura, Francesco del Cossa and others at the Palazzo Schifanoia, a summer pleasure villa/palazzo located just outside the city gates of Ferrara.
It is a purely pagan cycle of the months which presents the cycle of the year as an allegorical pageant with the appropriate Olympian gods presiding on their fanciful triumphal cars drawn by the beasts proper to each deity, with appropriate personifications of the constellations of the zodiac. The frescoes were realized circa 1469–70 by artisans of the d'Este household, the larger figures based on cartoons by Cosmé Tura, and the vignettes of the labors of the year and the activities of the Ferrarese court under the benevolent eye of Borso d'Este, flanked by astrological figures to designs by Francesco del Cossa and Ercole de' Roberti. The learned and elaborate scheme of the allegorical presentations must have come from the immediate circle of Borso d'Este, perhaps from the court astrologer, Pellegrino Prisciani, with some details drawn from Boccaccio's Genealogia deorum.
The frescos were only partially restored in the 20th century, and there are three that are reasonably assigned to Cossa. Of these, one of the most remarkable images is the horde of naked toddlers in the Allegory of May - Triumph of Apollo. Apparently a sign of springtime's prolific blossoming, the crowded rows of babies mass like a phalanx of infantile Rockettes.
The Allegory of April has a depiction of the Three Graces, one of the earliest post-classical representations of the naked intertwined dancers in painting, predating Sandro Botticelli's version in Primavera and Three Graces by Raphael.
List of frescos
- Allegory of March: Triumph of Minerva
- Allegory of April: Triumph of Venus
- Allegory of May: Triumph of Apollo
- Allegory of June: Triumph of Mercury
- Allegory of July: Triumph of Jupiter
- Allegory of August: Triumph of Ceres
- Allegory of September: Triumph of Vulcan
See also
