Tutto a suo tempo: la didattica ‘inclusiva’ dei cicli monumentali dei Mesi in Italia

The article is about the representation of the months in medieval sculpture in Italy. Even though an ample bibliography on the subject exists, focused on single, specific cases, often on hotly debated questions of attribution and chronology, there are no works that give a comprehensive overview of the subject, and, at the same time, research on the reasons behind what can be defined as a real and true iconographic phenomenon: the execution in stone, as preferred medium, of more than twenty series between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries from the North to the South of the Italian peninsula. What is of interest is, above all, to understand the novelty of the iconography compared to those from Antiquity and the High Middle Ages, the latter limited to a few Carolingian and Ottonian illuminated manuscripts. The revelation is that the sculptural cycles of the months realized in the Middle Ages exhibit a more limited and simplified repertory compared to the past, that is undoubtedly more ‘targeted’ and therefore conceived to communicate specific messages, something that needs to be put in relation to the choice of the monumental format. The insertion of the cycle of the months into complex programs that decorate the monuments determine an essential dialogue with the biblical exegesis subjects (there usually displayed), which paradoxically almost become marginal notes which make explicit the implicit meaning of the months. Only in merely descriptive appearance of seasonal activities that mark the passage of time, these images, corresponding surprisingly to proverbs still in use today, but whose original meanings have been lost in the mists of time, were able to evoke a gamut of multiple associations to such an extent that we can talk of thematic polysemy. In this ample and differentiated panorama, there is, however, space for a new interpretation, which is based on both symbols and precepts.