Leaf from a Book of Hours: Calendar Page for June (verso) (c. 1510): Art, History and Details

Leaf from a Book of Hours: Calendar Page for June (verso) (c. 1510) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

On this calendar page, June is illustrated with the month’s labor of gathering hay. One figure cuts hay with a scythe while the other uses a rake to gather it. Also featured is a crab, signifying the month’s zodiac sign, Cancer. In this lavishly decorated leaf, the most important feast days are listed in gold, while other days are in alternating red and blue inks. The original manuscript containing this leaf was whole as late as the 1980s, and today its leaves can be found in museums around the country.

Object facts

• Title: Leaf from a Book of Hours: Calendar Page for June (verso)
• Date: c. 1510
• Culture: France, Rouen
• Type: Manuscript
• Technique: ink, tempera, and liquid gold on vellum
• Dimensions: Leaf: 19.5 x 13 cm (7 11/16 x 5 1/8 in.)
• Collection: MED - Manuscript Illuminations
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 2011.65.b

A detail from the museum

It is believed that medieval men and women read their books of hours aloud, not silently.

Collection credit

The Jeanne Miles Blackburn Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Fliegel, Stephen N. The Jeanne Miles Blackburn Collection of Manuscript Illuminations. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1999.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.