The akg-images London Christmas card 2021

Buonconsiglio Castle is a charming and fascinating set of buildings, rising just beyond the city walls of Trento that date back to the 1200s. The complex was the residence of the Prince-Bishops of Trento for nearly six centuries. One of its towers, known as Aquila, or Eagle, holds one of the most important fresco cycles from the International Gothic art movement in Europe: the Cycle of the Months. Although the original painter is not known for certain, evidence seems to point to Bohemian Master Venceslao, court painter of George of Liechtenstein.

In medieval times, it was traditional to link the work of people to the seasons and planets. Some church portals and facades were decorated with bas-reliefs and statues depicting the months. This developed into richly decorated iconography which drew from religious, agricultural and folklore themes. On the one hand, the art developed for narrative purposes, on the other, with allegorical or religious intentions, given that the months could indicate the progression of work in the fields and the periods of rest due to seasons.

The main room of the Eagle Tower was designed to suggest an uninterrupted flow of time and the seasons, continuing in a sequence. The walls depict three months each, the months separated by slender columns, and proceed in a clockwise direction. Of the original twelve months, only March has been lost, as it was painted on a wooden wall that covered a staircase, which was later destroyed.

The cycle begins with January on the eastern wall, and continues almost like a film, mainly due to the constant presence of the landscape, which, through its colours and forms - mountains, hills and rivers - that follow their course from one month to the next, winding along in an eternal and inevitable cycle.

Every year in the akg-images London office, we share a lightbox of potential images for our Christmas card. An image of a man in red robes throwing a snowball caught the eye of Christine, our translator. Upon searching a little more, it was discovered that it was part of larger image- "January" from the Cycle of Months at Buonconsiglio Castle. In the image you can see men and women engaged in a snowball fight against the backdrop of a castle. There are hunters roaming the castle grounds, and foxes running in the wood. If you look closely you can see little rabbits in the bushes. Everyone in the office loved it because it incorporated art with a charming bucolic scene, sprinkled with humour and snow!

The January fresco had suffered somewhat with the passage of time and several of the figures featured had lost their original colour. We enlisted the assistance of graphic designer Elin Moxon-Tritsch to sympathetically restore the colours and retouch the image to enable us to use it as our 2021 Christmas card. Elin added purple to the robes of the man in the lower left, and blue to the robes of the woman on the right. The damage to the fresco where her face would have been was almost convenient for our purposes, as it appeared as if she had been hit with a snowball, so we elected to not retouch it. ​ We finished by restoring some faded and damaged areas and the result was a beautiful image with a lot of interesting detail, taken from a fascinating source.

Best wishes for the festive season, and a happy and healthy 2022, from everyone at akg-images London.

We will be closed from 6pm on 23rd December - 9am 4th January.

See more images of the Cycle of the Months here