Tuesday, January 6, 2009

I remember sky, it was blue as ink

Les Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, the medieval book of hours crafted by the Limbourg Brothers, has probably the most famous, historically significant, and beautiful calendar illustrations in all of Western art. Those delicate details, surrounded by that pure lapis-lazuli blue!

So riddle me this: with 9000 calendars for sale on Calendars.com, why does not a single one of them feature the illustrations from Les Tres Riches Heures?

I would've thought that, on the contrary, every modern calendar manufacturer would produce a Limbourg brothers calendar. And before you ask "but who would buy it?", I totally would! Specifically, I'd have bought it for my father for Christmas. Dad has a thing for paintings that feature striking skies, à la Maxfield Parrish...


or Albert Bierstadt...


so I wanted to acquaint him with the less dramatic, but equally sumptuous, skies of the Limbourg Brothers.

Images: "January" from Les Tres Riches Heures (high-res images of all 12 paintings available on Wikipedia); "Ecstasy" by Parrish; "The Oregon Trail" by Bierstadt.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I would've thought that, on the contrary, every modern calendar manufacturer would produce a Limbourg brothers calendar. And before you ask "but who would buy it?", I totally would! Specifically, I'd have bought it for my father for Christmas.

Using Word and even a middle-of-the-road printer can give you striking results of self published stuff. A trip down to Kinkos and Viola!, er, Voila!, something for dad! Thanks for the pointer to the hi-def images