Month of March with Aries 1559

This is Franz Brun’s ‘Month of March with Aries’, made around 1600 using engraving on laid paper. The print shows a continuous landscape of agricultural labour. We see men plowing, sowing seed, and harvesting wood in a barren landscape. It is a relatively inexpensive medium, one that makes images widely accessible. The crispness of the lines and the fineness of detail rewards close looking. Brun was a prolific printmaker, but his work is not exactly celebrated as high art. The linear quality of this engraving, and its subject matter, aligns with its function as a calendar print. It would likely have been pasted into a book, or perhaps even tacked to a wall. Considering this humble context encourages us to think of labor differently. The value of the print resides in its practicality, rather than as a mere object of aesthetic contemplation. That such work went largely unsigned suggests the importance of collective effort. With its detailed rendering of early modern labour, it is a reminder that we should value all types of making equally.