2025 Ordo Kalendar

2025 Calendar
PRE ORDER NOW--SHIPPING WILL BEGIN NOVEMBER 22ND

10 x 12 & 5/8 inches
12 pages with hole punch for hanging

This year’s Ordo Kalendar features the Retable and Frontal of the Life of Christ and the Virgin from the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.

This massive, multi-part painting decorated the funerary chapel of Pedro López de Ayala, a powerful nobleman of the Kingdom of Castile. Born in 1332 in what is now northern Spain, Pedro was trained for the Church but became heir to the Lordship of Ayala after the death of his older brother. This clerical education marked him out against his contemporaries, as he not only served at court, and in the many wars that ravaged the Iberian Peninsula at that time, but also worked as an historian, a translator, and a poet. 

Yet despite these worldly interests, Don Pedro had a reputation for great piety, as can be seen from his investment in the retable and altar frontal that he commissioned for the chapel of his stronghold in Quejana. The images, depicted in tempura and gold leaf on large panels of wood, highlight important events in the life of Christ and the Virgin Mary. The retable may be read in chronological order, from left to right, bottom to top. This arrangement allows for the central event relating to the mass (The Crucifixion) to occupy the location directly above the place on the altar where the consecration would occur.

Though Don Pedro lived on the cusp of the Renaissance, the style of these paintings is that of an illuminated manuscript, which hearkens back to an earlier age. It is offered here, along with readings from The Anglican Breviary, as both an aid to devotion and insight into the piety of the later Middle Ages.