The world’s greatest calendar

The world’s greatest calendar

In somewhat the same way as Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the illuminated paintings of The Very Rich Hours of the Duke of Berry exemplify our dream of the Middle Ages at their height, featuring, to quote the new exhibition at the Musée Condé’s press kit, “fairy-tale castles” with dashing lords and elegant ladies at banquets and riding through fields amid the changing seasons. Nor are “the people” excluded: we see a peasant scattering his grain to …