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Every day of the Church year is dedicated to the memory of one or more saints or to a feast which commemorates an important event in the life of Christ or His mother. While it is fairly common to find depictions of all the saints and feasts commemorated in a particular month, it is rare to see the whole Church year painted on one or two panels. The picture shows an old Russian example of a complete calendar in the form of a diptych.
The Orthodox liturgical year comprises two cycles of festivals: one of movable feasts based on the lunar calendar, and another, whose dates are fixed, based on the solar year. The saints and feasts of the latter are depicted in ten rows on each panel, in precise chronological order. A red dot (representing the moon) marks the start of each new month.
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