Summer Countryside Scene
Author: Unknown
Origin: Unknown
Dating: 17th century (?)
Material: Oil on Canvas
Dimensions (cm): 49,8 x 67
Inv. no.: PDdep0018
The painting depicts a rural scene where, the upper part, reveal a grove of trees opening to a cloudy sky landscape with some contrast of light and shadow. In the lower area, several characters are working laboriously in the winemaking process. Here, the painter uses an intense frontal light, directed to each of the three main work nuclei of wine: grape maturation, must and fermentation.
In the left portion of the painting, a couple stands examining a grapevine, assessing the maturity of the fruit. Nearby, a man is foot-treading grapes in a broad wooden barrel. On the opposite side, a woman is kneeling is tasting the quality of the must. To her left, oxen pull the cart with a large wooden barrel, carrying the must to the winery. On the right of the taster, another figure is seen emptying a basket of grapes into a separate barrel. These grapes, likely of a white variety, would undergo a winemaking process distinct from that of the red grapes.
“Flora in the Palace’s Collections”
«The paintings exhibited at the Ducal Palace of the Bragança […] – by an anonymous painter, and likely executed in the 17th century – are copies of engravings that were circulating at the time and that spread throughout various parts of Europe.
The original engravings are attributed to the Sadeler brothers – Johann (1550-1600), Raphael (1560/1-1628/32) e Aegidius (1555-1609) –, members of one of the most important dynasties of Flemish engravers who dominated the market in northern Europe, including the Veneto region, from the second half of the 16th century until the end of the 17th century.
The Sadeler brothers’ great reputation was precisely earned through the dissemination of these engravings on the seasons of the year which were, ultimately, reproductions of a series of paintings by Jacopo Bassano and his workshop.
Titled The Seasons, this series (1574-75), was conceived by Jacopo da Ponte, also known as Jacopo Bassano (1510-92), an influential painter of the Venetian Renaissance. The paintings focused on the seasonal tasks of rural life, depicted in a naturalistic manner that […] evoked the ideal of the joy of rural work and where everything seemed to flow orderly.
The paintings […] displayed in the Museum of Art History in Vienna, were the genesis of the engravings and of the two works found in the Ducal Palace.
[…]
Curiously, [this] painting […] focuses solely on the task of the grape harvest, without any allusion to the sower and omitting any other detail. In the foreground, the act of picking and treading grapes takes place, probably highlighting the crucial importance that the grape harvest had in the family economy, crossing all classes of Portuguese society.
Within the cultural cycle of the vineyard, the time of the harvest offered a less arduous task, which is why the elderly, women, and children participated, regardless of the fact that the harvest is often far from being easy work. However, from an economic point of view, it was a noble task that women were fully entitled to perform.
Generally, according to Cistercian rules in Portugal, the harvest began preferably in September with white grapes – according to tradition, during the waning moon – and lasted until the end of October.
Grapes were harvested, by hand or with a simple pocketknife, into baskets, then transferred to barrels and from there to larger recipients mounted on ox carts that would eventually take them to the wineries. However, in hilly terrains, built in terraces – as was often the case in Portugal – the transport was done manually with men carrying wicker baskets on their backs, with a weight of grapes that could reach up to 70 kg., which triggered the fermentation process through the crushing occurring, during the transport itself, before the grapes reached the wineries.
Autumn was also the natural time for harvesting orchard fruits, but, in Portugal, the dictates of the winemaking calendar superseded all others.
[…]
It is also in autumn, rooted in the culture of the vineyard that sweeps across the country from north to south, when the sublime moment of chromatic transformation of the vines and deciduous trees that still persist in Portugal’s forests occurs, such as oaks, Pyrenean oaks and Portuguese oaks, white poplars, birchs or elms. Hues of yellow, orange and red mix cwith the remaining green and senescent brown, creating one of the most beautiful and exciting paintings that nature insists on offering us»
Sasha Assis Lima
