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Sandrart, best known for his major art history published in 1675 under the title "Teutsche Academie" is one of the few artist-writers whose painterly oeuvre was on a par with his literary ambitions.
For Prince Maximilian of Bavaria, Sandrart painted allegories of day and night as well as a cycle of twelve paintings of the months of the year for the dining room of the Old Palace in Schleissheim. The months, accompanied by verses, were widely distributed in the form of engravings. They are illustrated by life-size half figures set in landscapes or interiors and show characteristic activities associated with the respective seasons and surrounded by their natural attributes. November, under the zodiac sign of Sagittarius the hunter, shows a hunter's return. With his nervous dogs on a short leash and his catch slung over his shoulder, he is heading towards a castle in the middle distance. A keen wind tears the leaves from the trees and scatters them through the air.
Landscape and genre, still-life and allegory are combined in a picture that epitomizes the month of November in concentrated form. Only briefly and in passing does the hunter glance to one side, and once more we find an allegorical personification of time passing.
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