The Harvest: Allegory of Summer

For centuries Europeans pictured the year as a round of work. The calendars at the front of prayer books gave every month its own labour, and in high summer, July and August, that labour was the grain harvest, cutting, binding and carting. This little copper disc, about 12 centimetres across, comes out of that long habit. The museum calls it The Harvest, with Summer in brackets, and dates it to around 1596. It was made as the partner of a winter picture of the same size and shape, and Brueghel took the two ends of the year from quite different worlds. Winter is a carnival in Rome, a festival in the city streets. Summer is the harvest out in the fields. In the 20th century the pair were given matching round frames, made in Munich as a set.