The Hall of Months

Promoted by Borso d’Este beginning in 1466, the expansion of the original delizia at Schifanoia allowed for the creation of a large room designed to welcome guests and court, as well as to exalt the duke’s lineage and political and social virtues. The great hall, which houses one of the largest secular decorative cycles of the Renaissance, is divided into eighteen vertical bands containing the twelve months of the year interspersed with urban views and group scenes, which can be read counterclockwise from the south wall. Each month is divided into three sections or registers: at the top is always placed the triumph of the Olympian patron deity of that period, surrounded by the human activities usually associated with it. In the center stand the signs of the Zodiac flanked by depictions of the three decans, pagan deities placed to protect the three decades that make up a month. Finally, the lower register opens onto scenes of daily life in which Duke Borso is always depicted three times, intent on controlling the territory, hunting or administering the duchy.

Conceived and designed by Borso himself together with the court astrologer Pellegrino Prisciani, the cycle was realized by a numerous group of artists between 1469 and 1470. In addition to Francesco del Cossa, attested to Schifanoia thanks to a letter from him in which he claims authorship of the three months “toward the antechamber” (March, April, May), critics have also stylistically identified the so-called wide-eyed Master and his workshop in June and July, the court painter Gherardo da Vicenza in the August compartment and his pupil Ercole de’ Roberti in the September compartment. These artists and their workshops did not use the fresco technique on the entire surface of the salon, but alternated or substituted it for tempera applied directly with dry paint on the previously finished surfaces, as evidenced by the poor state of preservation in October, December, January and February and the nearby urban scenes.