- ciation. German, early 17th century. 5 feet 3 inches by 4 feet
6 inches.
This piece, though much resembling the foregoing, No. 5665, is
far below it as an art-work, and, by its style, betrays itself as the production
of another period. Within a wreath, the Annunciation is
figured, after the usual manner, but without gracefulness, in the middle
of the cloth; at one corner Winter is shown, by men in a yard chopping
up and stacking wood; then, by the inside of a room where a woman
is warming herself before one of those large blind stoves still found in
Germany, and a bearded man, seated in a large chair, doing the same
at a brazier near his feet, while outside the house a couple are riding
on a sledge drawn by a gaily caparisoned horse. At the corner opposite
we have Spring—a farm-house, with its beehives, and a dame coming
out with a jug of milk to a woman who is churning, near whom is
a hedger at his work, and other men pruning, grafting, and sowing.
For Summer, two gentlemen are snaring birds with a net; a woman
and a man, each with a sickle in hand, are in a cornfield; two people
are bathing in a duck-pond before a farm-house, on the roof of which
is a nest with two storks sitting, one of which has caught a snake;
and in a meadow hard by a man is mowing and a woman making
hay. For Autumn, we see a vineyard where one man is gathering
grapes and another carrying them in a long basket on his shoulders;
and near, a man with a nimb, or glory, about his head, and lying on
the ground with one leg outstretched, which a dog is licking above
the thigh—perhaps the shepherd St. Rock, and, while a gentleman is
walking past behind him, a girl, with a basket of fruit upon her head,
is coming towards the spot. Between the seasons, and within circular
garlands, are subjects akin to these parts of the year; in a boat, upon
the water, a young couple are beginning the voyage of life together;
a lady on a grey horse is, with hawk on hand, disporting herself in the
flowery fields; a young lady is caressing a lamb with one hand and
carries a basket of young birds in the other; last of all, another lady is
kneeling at her prayers, with a book open before her on a table over-*spread
with a nicely worked cloth. A deep gold fringe runs all round
the four sides of this table-cover.
