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The Villa Chiericati was built in the first half of the sixteenth century for Ludovico Chiericati, a nobleman from Vicenza. It underwent numerous restorations and reworkings over time, resulting in its current architectural form, an extended structure with a simple façade that is barely enlivened by a tympanum supported by four Ionic pilasters. A room on the north side, called Room of Landscapes, was decorated with six frescoes of landscape scenes, each incorporating two zodiac signs, by Lodewijk Toeput. During one of the updatings the frescoes were painted over, and it was not until the beginning of the nineteenth century, on the occasion of yet another restoration, that they were finally revealed.
The landscapes contain explicit references to the sequence of the seasons and their related zodiac signs, the marking of time that rhythmically measures the work and the days of good guardianship of the land. These are extremely naturalistic paintings, at times enlivened by the presence of slender little figures rendered with a touch of vitality.
On the wall shown in the present picture, the vivid figure of the page and his greyhound stand out flanked by a Landscape between Autumn and Winter and a Winter Landscape.
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