VII. GOTHIC PALACES 317

the attendant sun and moon, set one on each side, to rule over the day and over the night.

§ 52. The months are personified as follows:-

1. JANUARY. Carrying home a noble tree on his shoulders, the leafage of which nods forward, and falls nearly to his feet. Superbly cut. This is a rare representation of him. More frequently he is represented as the two-headed Janus, sitting at a table, drinking at one mouth and eating at the other. Sometimes as an old man, warming his feet at a fire, and drinking from a bowl; though this type is generally reserved for February. Spenser, however, gives the same symbol as that on St. Mark’s:

“Numbd with holding all the day

An hatchet keene, with which he felled wood.”¹

His sign, Aquarius, is obscurely indicated in the archivolt by some wavy lines representing water, unless the figure has been broken away.

2. FEBRUARY. Sitting in a carved chair, warming his bare feet at a blazing fire. Generally, when he is thus represented, there is a pot hung over the fire, from the top of the chimney. Sometimes he is pruning trees, as in Spenser:

“Yet had he by his side

His plough and harness fit to till the ground,

And tooles to prune the trees.”

Not unfrequently, in the calendars, this month is represented by a female figure carrying candles, in honour of the Purification of the Virgin.

His sign, Pisces, is prominently carved above him.

3. MARCH. Here, as almost always in Italy, a warrior: the Mars of the Latins being, of course, in medićval work, made representative of the military power of the place and period; and thus, at Venice, having the winged Lion

¹ [The quotations from Spenser are from canto vii. book vii. of The Faerie Queene-January, stanza 42; February, 43; March, 32; April to December, 33-41. Ruskin occasionally modernises the spelling.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]