SEASONS. – The theme of the SEASONS, on account of its allegorical scope, engaged Christian art from its very origins (v. PERSONIFICATIONS).
Later, it became intertwined with the more complex, yet related, themes of the Zodiac and the Months. The starting point for all further developments is indicated by a Paleo-Christian ivory preserved in the Treasury of the Cathedral of Milan. The *Agnus Dei* is inscribed within a garland of fruits that changes four times in its circuit, signifying the succession of the SEASONS and exalting, within the circle that has neither beginning nor end, the eternity of the symbol it frames. Yet here the decorative material is still perceived in its realistic articulation of volumes and enjoyed beyond any didactic grace.
As time advanced, this tendency was overshadowed by allegorical intent: the calligraphic sign alone sufficed for allusive stylization. Only the didactic meanings survived, and the theme of the SEASONS was absorbed into the intricate and generic rhythms of ecclesiastical calendars. This process was completed in Byzantine miniature art. The motif now mattered only for its reference to the parable of human life, that is, for the obvious analogies of literary origin, for example, between spring and youth, summer and maturity, and so on. Transformed in this way, it was returned by miniature art to the figurative arts of the Romanesque period, as can be observed in a fresco in the crypt of the cathedral of Anagni. Around a nude man placed at the center of a vault appear four small nimbed heads bearing the inscriptions: *Ver humidum et calidum* – *estas calida et sicca* – *Autumnus frigidus* – *Hiemus humidus*.
The figurative evocation of the characteristics of the SEASONS and Months, generally combined with the illustration of human activities, regained full meaning when the Church sought to draw the faithful back to rural pursuits, assuming an educational role as well: the very basic meteorological knowledge essential to the success of all agricultural activity was imparted in church, and this provided a pretext for its representation as a permanent reminder. Yet the motif pleased and succeeded especially for its lofty moral and theological significance; as a glorification of labor, in which humanity’s aspiration to that perfection and fullness of physical and intellectual life is at work—the first root of redemption. One may see how this conception finds its consecration in the double cycle of sculptures and paintings in the Baptistery of Parma, where another medieval parallel holds sway, namely that the four SEASONS correspond to the four Evangelists, just as the twelve months correspond to the twelve Apostles. There, indeed, of a complete sculptural cycle comprising the four SEASONS and the twelve Months, perhaps originally arranged in a single frieze, only the two high-reliefs of Spring and Autumn remain, hierarchically exalted in their larger proportions and in their frontal or foreshortened presentation, compared to those of the Months, which are inscribed in profile.
In the frescoes of the lunettes inside, the SEASONS are grouped in pairs, and their particular meaning has merged into the recurrence of an insistent quaternary rhythm throughout the decoration (the four rivers of Eden, the four dimensions, etc.). Within this allusive framework are placed the analogous cyclical figurations on the portals of French and Italian cathedrals, even in the Gothic period, from Notre-Dame in Paris to the cathedral of Cremona, from San Martino in Lucca to the cathedral of Messina.
Renaissance art stripped the theme of its rigorously allegorical connection. It was taken up again for its value as a decorative opportunity, in which, if any allusion remains, it is to the various ways in which the Platonic ideal of beauty is configured in human vicissitudes and the variations of time.
While in the various *Books of Hours* of Flemish and French miniature art the documentary and illustrative interest prevails, and the sense of the SEASONS becomes a chronicle and sentiment of the various devices by which humanity defends itself and exploits meteorological changes and their natural effects, in Italian sculpture and painting of the Quattrocento the taste for ideal personification persists, rarely lapsing into mere narrative episode. Typical examples of this approach are readily recalled: the classical example of Botticelli’s *Primavera*, and even more the group of the SEASONS executed by artists of the Ferrarese school, once in the church of San Domenico in Ferrara and now dispersed among the Strozzi Collection (Florence), the Gemäldegalerie (Budapest), and the Kaiser-Friedrich Museum (Berlin). The highest moment is reached in the *Autumn* of the latter collection, variously attributed (Galasso, Francesco del Cossa): a pensive figure of a young woman, firmly planted, brandishing her tools and supporting some vine branches from which succulent clusters hang, dominates, like a pagan divinity, a bright landscape populated with small figures. The subordinate theme of the Months and zodiacal signs finds ample development in the frescoes of Palazzo Schifanoia in Ferrara (Tura, F. del Cossa, E. de’ Roberti), which in its entirety sums up the metaphysical taste of Humanist allegories.
Here, any religious intention is now definitively severed. The development of the theme in 16th-century art would yield other artistically elevated examples, such as the statues by A. Vittoria at Villa Pisani (Montagnana), those by Francavilla and Caccini on the Ponte Santa Trinita (Florence), and the witty pictorial interpretations by Paolo Veronese at Maser, where the personification of the SEASONS is brought back to coincide with the pagan deities who represented them in classical myths (for example, Spring is personified by Venus, Summer by Ceres, Autumn by Bacchus, etc.).
Similarly, in scenographic garden layouts the theme naturally merges with the evocation of classical deities; and Ceres, Pomona, Flora, and Proserpina are especially invoked (examples abound, from Pirro Ligorio’s Villa d’Este [Tivoli] to Giacomo della Porta’s Villa Aldobrandini [Frascati], the Palladian Villas of the Veneto, and the 18th-century Villa Barbarigo at Valsanzibio [Padua]). It is evident that here personification does not coincide with a cultural exigency, and the iconographic datum reduces itself to a mere pretext, a play of environmental references, functioning emblematically and allusively.
In the 17th century, however, the motif enjoyed some revivals with the bold aerial perspectives that Veronese had impressed upon it; but artists focused above all on sensory stimuli (so that allegory becomes a cipher of purely physical effects: the solar radiance in summer, the looming of rain-laden clouds in autumn, etc.), particularly in the Genoese pictorial cycles of Palazzo Bianco (D. Piola) and Palazzo Rosso (G. de Ferrari), and in those by Ciro Ferri at Villa Falconieri in Frascati.
The 18th century adhered to a selection of analogous, specific references such as those that had distinguished Flemish miniature art: the SEASONS were visualized in the attitudes they suggest to humanity. Thus, G. B. Tiepolo celebrated Summer with a delicate poetry tinged with exoticism in frescoes such as *The Peasants’ Rest* in the Villa Valmarana (Vicenza); Van Loo and the Valeriani brothers depicted the phases of *Diana’s Hunt* at the Castle of Stupinigi, personifying Spring, Summer, and Autumn.
The 19th century abandoned the personifications and focused its attention on the landscape and environmental aspects of each Season. Above all, the French Impressionists engaged in chromatic and luminous research from which the illustrative intention is now far removed. Sisley executed the entire cycle of the Seasons with many variations, achieving his best result in the Spring in the Nationalgalerie in Berlin (1874). But there is perhaps no painter who does not have in the body of his production more than one piece entitled to the Seasons; it will suffice to recall Cézanne’s Summer in the Liebermann collection (Berlin) and, for Italy, Pragiacomo’s Winter in the Galleria d’arte moderna in Rome and Segantini’s Alpine Spring in the Galleria d’arte moderna in Milan. — See pl. LXXVIII.