Ar 22 Oct 2000, ag 0:41 scríobh William Overington
fán ábhar "Re: Colours":
Speaking about some postcard versions of Les très riches heures du Duc de
Berry William said:
> In those pictures, one for each month of the year, there was a square or
> maybe rectangular picture at the bottom...
> ...and above it a semicircular area, so that the top of the picture was
> approximately the horizontal diameter of the semicircle, with numbers
> representing the days of the month going clockwise from positions that I
> can best describe here in text in terms of a modern clock face, as going
> from 9 o'clock to 3 o'clock.
>
> Some of the numbers were black and some were red.
>
> I do not know the details of why this was, though possibly they are Saints'
> Days. In any case, here colour was being used to convey a different meaning
> to symbols. It may be that there was an explanation on another page of the
> book, a text page which was not available on the postcards. Does anyone
> know about this please?
The top halves show the signs of the zodiac for the relevant month. The
outermost divisions are the 30 degrees of each sign, in 5 degree segments in
contrasting colours (blue & red BTW). The innermost wheel shows the days of
the month, the phases of the moon and some other information that I can't
quite decypher. I believe the colours are used purely for contrast.
Pictures of these calendar pages & some info is available throught the
WebMuseum:
UK
http://sunsite.doc.ic.ac.uk/wm/rh/
Find your local mirror here
http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/
`~:.,.:'^`~:.,.:'^`~:.,.:'^`~:.,.:'^`~:.,.:'^`~:.,.:'^`~:.,.:'^`~:.,.:'^`~
S e á n Ó S é a g h d h a sean@urania.apana.org.au
Is maith an t-anlann an t-ocras. Seanfhocal.
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