I never thought medieval people played snowball fights. I never imagined them playing at all. They lived in the dark middle ages after all, when the church ruled every minute of life, when love was little considered in arranged marriages, and when wars and epidemics decimated the population. Lately, I feel I terribly misunderstood that era. Now I think those people had fun and blithesome moments in their lives, and they loved very much in fact.
In Italy, in an old castle in Trento, the Castle of Buonconsiglio, there are nice frescoes on the walls depicting the circle of the months. Every one of them is rich and vivid and beautiful. I admire the month of January’s painting. The figures, the landscape, the castle are not at all proportional, but I admire this flaw: this is why medieval art looks so charmingly naïve sometimes. The painting reminds me of the Limbourg Brothers’ Book of Hours, another mesmerizing depiction of the months from the middle ages.
Women and men are throwing snowballs at each other, storing the balls in their dresses. They are joyfully sinking into a snow battle. The man in the forefront has no shoes, only green pants, which are painfully unsuitable for any activity in the snow, or for anything at all in general, but he seemingly does not care about soaking to the bone. No coats, no boots, no gloves, only joy and fun. I like that.
In the background, one of the huntsmen is just coming back with the dinner feast’s meat ingredient on his shoulders, and somebody else is doing something inside the castle I cannot make out.
The battle is fair with equally three-three players on both sides. The participants take the game very seriously, the three women and the three men, and the snowballs are well-made and well-sizable bullets.
Sadly the fresco has been damaged at one of the women’s face, at the one who holds her hand defensively as if she would have been hit by a snowball, but we will never know for sure. Or…perhaps the white smudge on her face is the snow exploding? It would be so funny if that would be the case. I would admire medieval times even more for that merry detail.
