For centuries, countless children and adults have found joy in our dark winter days by participating in pastimes like snowballing, tobogganing, and skating. Though the snow hasn’t quite reached us yet, here are a few seasonally inspired images of winters past to brighten the short December days…
Fresco depicting January at Castello Buonconsiglio, Trento, Italy, c. 1405-1410.
Fresco depicting January at Castello Buonconsiglio, Trento, Italy, c. 1405-1410.
Snowball fight in Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Douce 135. Book of Hours, Use of Rome.
Snowball fight in Walters Art Museum, W42512R. Flemish, c. 1510.
Snowball fight in Tacuinum Sanitatis (BnF NAL 1673), c. 1390-1400.
December the Book of Hours of Adélaïde de Savoie (Musée Condé 78), c. 1460-1465.
Tobogganing in the margins of ‘The Golf Book’, British Library MS Addition 24098.
Tobogganing in the margins of ‘The Golf Book’, British Library MS Addition 24098.
Skating (?) and tobogganing in Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Douce 5.
Allegory of Winter by Ambrogio Lorenzetti fresco in the Palazzo Publico of Siena, c. 1338-1340.
Professor Sarah Peverley 
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