ABSTRACT
The March calendar page in the Très Riches Heures depicts peasants hard at work. In the front, a peasant plows a field, while farther back at the left, peasants prune vines and tend sheep; in a field at the right, another peasant bends over to fill a large bag up to the brim. The authority responsible for controlling and containing these activities - and laying out the order and structure of these spaces - is frankly identified within the landscape itself. To be sure, the woman in the right foreground wears a blue dress with more saturated coloration, just as the plowman in March wears garb that includes deeper tones of red and blue. The forest setting of May differentiates the scene from those of the peasants, which are all set within cultivated fields. One could read the dense forest here as a containing and perhaps constraining element.
