hoakley posted: "The sickle is an example of a symbol whose meaning has been repurposed since the early twentieth century. Before 1917, when Lenin selected a design dominated by a hammer and sickle as the Soviet emblem, and its subsequent association with the proletariat," The Eclectic Light Company
The sickle is an example of a symbol whose meaning has been repurposed since the early twentieth century. Before 1917, when Lenin selected a design dominated by a hammer and sickle as the Soviet emblem, and its subsequent association with the proletariat, it had long been a symbol of the harvest and the fecundity of crops.
The sickle is a hand-held tool with a curved cutting edge used to harvest cereals and a range of other crops. It's one of man's oldest tools and was an essential part of the first agricultural revolution in Neolithic times. When humans started to work metals, it was one of the earliest tools to be fabricated, first in bronze then in iron. It was also incorporated into early ceremonial and religion, later including the Greek goddess Demeter (Δημήτηρ) and the Roman Ceres, who is so well-known that her name has been assimilated into English in the word cereal, referring to her most universal attribute of grain.
Demeter/Ceres is the goddess of the harvest, and of agriculture and food production more generally, extending to fertility of both plants and animals, including humans. Her attributes are ripe sheaves of wheat and the bread derived from it, and she's sometimes seen with a cornucopia or harvest spread, or feeding an infant at her breast, reflecting her association with fecundity and nutrition.
Antoine Watteau (1684–1721), Ceres (Summer) (c 1717-18), oil on canvas, 141.6 x 115.7 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Wikimedia Commons.
Although now excluded as a history painter, Watteau painted several mythological subjects, including this splendid tondo of Ceres as the allegory of Summer, from about 1717-18. She holds the sickle of the harvest, and is surrounded by ripe wheat. At the left is a lion, and below that a lobster, representing the summer constellation of Cancer.
Anne Vallayer-Coster (1744–1818), Garden Still Life, with Implements, Vegetables, Dead Game, and a Bust of Ceres (The Attributes of Hunting and Gardening) (1774), oil on canvas, 152.4 x 137.2 cm, National Trust, England. Wikimedia Commons.
The association is seen in Anne Vallayer-Coster's Garden Still Life, with Implements, Vegetables, Dead Game, and a Bust of Ceres (The Attributes of Hunting and Gardening) from 1774. At the left edge is a long-handled scythe used for cutting grass, and at the right a sickle, between which are some of the rewards of gardening, all overseen by Ceres.
Jean-François Millet (1814–1875), Ceres (The Summer) (c 1864-65), oil on canvas, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Bordeaux, France. Wikimedia Commons.
Jean-François Millet's Ceres (The Summer) (c 1864-65) is a classical mythological portrait. She stands, her breasts swollen and ready for lactation, her hair adorned with ripe ears of wheat, a sickle in her right hand to cut the harvest, and a traditional winnow (used to separate the grain from chaff) in her left hand. At her feet is a basketful of bread, with ground flour and cut sheaves of wheat behind. The background shows the wheat harvest in full swing, right back to a group of grain- or hay-stacks and an attendant wagon in the distance.
Károly Brocky (1807–1855), Ceres and Triptolemos (c 1853), oil on canvas, 139 x 119 cm, Ottó Herman Museum, Miskolc, Hungary. Wikimedia Commons.
Károly Brocky's Ceres and Triptolemos from about 1853 is an evocation of deities with roles in productive agriculture, using a quiet form of multiplex narrative. In the foreground, Ceres is bidding the young Triptolemus to sow seed from the bag carried by a young child, who may be Plutus. In the background the harvest is also in full swing, many months after that seed would have been sown.
Sickles also became involved in Bacchantic rites, where they played a murderous role in the myths of Orpheus.
Émile Lévy (1826–1890), Death of Orpheus (1866), oil on canvas, 189 x 118 cm, Musée d'Orsay, Paris. Wikimedia Commons.
Émile Lévy's painting of the Death of Orpheus from 1866 shows a group of Bacchantes swinging their thyrsus clubs and a vicious-looking sickle as they kill Orpheus in their frenzy.
Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), The Apotheosis of Henry IV and Homage to Marie de' Medici (Marie de' Medici Cycle) (c 1622-25), oil on canvas, 394 x 727 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris. Wikimedia Commons.
Rubens included a sickle in his elaborate allegory of The Apotheosis of Henry IV and Homage to Marie de' Medici, painted in about 1622-25 as part of the Marie de' Medici Cycle. This shows the assassinated king being welcomed into heaven as a victor by the gods Jupiter and Saturn. Saturn, holding a sickle in his right hand, marks the end of Henry's earthly existence in his role of the Divine Reaper, by appointment to the late king.
The sickle is an unusual symbol of death, which is more widely represented by a long-handled scythe.
Henry Fuseli (1741–1825), Dido (1781), oil on canvas, 244.3 x 183.4 cm, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT. Wikimedia Commons.
One of Henry Fuseli's few conventional history paintings shows Dido (1781), towards the end of book four of the Aeneid, as the founding queen of Carthage is in the throes of death after she had been abandoned by Aeneas. Fuseli adheres faithfully to Virgil's account, around line 666: Dido has mounted her funeral pyre, and is on the couch on which she and Aeneas made love.
She then falls on a sword which Aeneas had given her, and that rests, covered with her blood, beside her, its tip pointing up towards her right breast. Her sister Anna rushes in to embrace her during her dying moments, and Zeus sends Iris, here shown above and wielding a golden sickle to cut a lock of Dido's hair. Iris then releases Dido's spirit from her body.
Sickles are also encountered in one of the many myths of rape by deception in Ovid's Metamorphoses, that of Vertumnus and Pomona. Vertumnus was the Roman god of seasons, change and gardens, and a notorious shape-shifter, who deceived Pomona when he assumed the form of an old woman. Having gained entry into her orchard, he then tried to seduce her.
Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641) and Jan Roos (c 1591–1638), Vertumnus and Pomona (c 1625), oil, 142 x 197 cm, Musei di Strada Nuova, Genoa, Italy. Wikimedia Commons.
Anthony van Dyck and Jan Roos collaborated in Vertumnus and Pomona in about 1625, a painting rich in symbolism and visual devices. Pomona has her left arm around Vertumnus, but in her right hand holds a silver sickle. She gazes wistfully into the distance, as if in a dream.
Vertumnus is looking up, pleading his case with the young woman, and his left hand (on a very muscular and masculine arm) is behind Pomona's left knee, between her legs. At the right, Cupid grimaces at the deception, his back turned, pointing at what's going on with apparent disapproval. At the lower left corner is a melon cut open to reveal its symbolic form, with its juice and seeds inside, an overt anatomical allusion.
Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), Vertumnus and Pomona (1617-19), oil on canvas, 120 x 200 cm, Private collection. Image by Jean-Pol GRANDMONT, via Wikimedia Commons.
In Peter Paul Rubens' earlier Vertumnus and Pomona from 1617-19, Vertumnus has assumed his real form, that of a handsome young man. Pomona looks back, her sickle still in her right hand, and her rejection of his advances is melting away in front of our eyes. Rubens even offers us a couple of symbolic melons, and provides distant hints at Vertumnus doing the work in the garden while Pomona directs him, at the upper left.
The sickle's involvement in sorcery is also featured in a few paintings.
In John William Waterhouse's Magic Circle from 1886, a barefoot witch or sorceress draws a blazing circle in the dust around her, as smoke and steam rises vertically. In her left hand she holds a golden sickle. Outside her magic circle are half a dozen ravens or crows spectating, perhaps waiting to be turned back into humans.
Finally, some paintings simply show the sickle being used in its everyday role.
Jules Breton (1827–1906), The Fig Picker (1873), oil on canvas, 101 × 65 cm, Private collection. Wikimedia Commons.
Jules Breton painted The Fig Picker (1873) in Brittany, where figs were a traditional fruit crop. The climate there is mild and moist, and since their probable introduction by the Romans, several suitable varieties have been developed. The picker wears a capacious apron to contain the crop, and her sickle rests on the ground near her feet.
Mykola Pymonenko (1862–1912), Reaper (1889), oil on canvas, dimensions not known, National Art Museum of Ukraine Національний художній музей України, Kyiv, Ukraine. Wikimedia Commons.
Reaper (1889) is one of Mykola Pymonenko's portraits of peasants working on the land in Ukraine. This young woman brandishes the sickle she's using to laboriously cut the wheat. That's hard work.
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