The Hunts of Maximilian: February, the Homage of the Hunters to King Modus and Queen Ratio
Bernard van Orley (cartoons), Dermoyen workshop (weaving) (c. 1488-1541) · c. 1531
Under a canopy at the left, a king and queen sit enthroned beside a statue of Diana the huntress while hunters and their dogs come forward to pay homage. The two sovereigns are not real people. They are King Modus and Queen Ratio, Method and Reason, the allegorical teachers of a famous fourteenth-century hunting treatise, and under their feet they trample two figures of Idleness and Gluttony. The hall opens onto a real place, the inner courtyard of the palace of Brussels with its ornate balustrade, and at the right you can pick out the old church of Saint James on the Coudenberg. A large Latin cartouche explains the moral: hunting practised with method and reason keeps body and mind healthy. The zodiac sign of Pisces in the upper border marks the month.
This is the closing scene of the twelve-piece cycle known as the Hunts of Maximilian, woven in Brussels around fifteen thirty-one after cartoons by Bernard van Orley, in wool, silk and silver and gilt thread. The set was in the French royal collection and entered the museum in seventeen ninety-seven. It ends the year with a lesson rather than a kill.
Did You Know? The enthroned king and queen are Method and Reason, allegories from a medieval hunting manual, trampling Idleness and Gluttony.
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