VII. GOTHIC PALACES 321

I do not remember him so employed elsewhere. He is nearly always killing pigs; sometimes beating the oak for them; with Spenser, fatting them.¹

12. DECEMBER. Killing swine. It is hardly ever that this employment is not given to one or other of the terminal months of the year. If not so engaged, December is usually putting new loaves into the oven; sometimes killing oxen. Spenser properly makes him feasting and drinking instead of January.²

§ 53. On the next page I have given a parallel view of the employment of the months from some Northern manuscripts, in order that they may be more conveniently compared with the sculptures of St. Mark’s in their expression of the varieties of climate and agricultural system. Observe that the letter (f.) in some of the columns, opposite the month of May, means that he has a falcon on his first; being, in those cases, represented as riding out, in high exultation, on a caparisoned white horse. A series nearly similar to that of St. Mark’s occurs on the door of the Cathedral of Lucca, and on that of the Baptistery of Pisa; in which, however, if I recollect rightly, February is fishing, and May has something resembling an umbrella in his hand, instead of a hawk. But, in all cases, the figures are treated with the peculiar spirit of the Gothic sculptors; and this archivolt is the first expression of that spirit which is to be found in Venice.

§ 54. In the private palaces, the entrances soon admitted some concession to the Gothic form also. They pass through nearly the same conditions of change as the windows, with these three differences: first, that no arches of the fantastic fourth order occur in any doorways; secondly, that the pure

¹ [“Next was November; he full grosse and fat

As fed with lard, and that right well might seeme;

For he had been fatting hogs of late.”]

² [“Yet he, through merry feasting which he made

And great bonfires, did not the cold remember...

And in his hand a broad deepe bowle he beares,

Of which he freely drinks an health to all his peeres.”]

X. X

[Version 0.04: March 2008]