Labors of the Months: July

Hans Wertinger's July from his Labors of the Months series presents the hay-making and summer agricultural activities that characterized early July in the Bavarian countryside. Haymaking, with its collective labor of cutting, drying, turning, and gathering, was among the most visually distinctive seasonal activities, and its depiction in calendar images emphasized the community's cooperative effort to prepare winter fodder for livestock. Wertinger's landscape observation and precise figure work give this July panel the same documentary quality that makes his entire months series so valuable as evidence of early modern Bavarian agricultural and social life.

Wertinger employs the bright, descriptive palette typical of the Danube School, with detailed observation of landscape elements and figures engaged in summer harvest activities rendered with lively naturalism.