Giovan Battista Vermiglioli, Le sculture di Niccolò e Giovanni da Pisa e di Arnolfo Fiorentino che ornano la Fontana Maggiore di Perugia disegnate ed incise da Silvestro Massari (Sculptures by Niccolò and Giovanni from Pisa decorating the Fontana Maggiore in Perugia, as designed and engraved by Silvestro Massari).

Perugia : Tip. Baduel at V. Bartelli, 1834 Sala del Dottorato, S-5-13

In the “Month-cycle” of the lower basin of the Fontana Maggiore, December’s tile is dedicated to the pig slaughtering, traditionally carried out between November and January.

The pig had its moment of glory in the early medieval world when even the extension of woods was measured in pigs.

With the transition to a sedentary farming in the Middle Ages, its main consumption shrank progressively to the lower classes, where the upper classes preferred beef, sheep, poultry and game meat.

Since the end of the Middle Ages dietary treaties begin to document a negative perception of pigs, for the "rubbish" they eat, and cookbooks of the sixteenth and seventeenth century mostly mention just the delicious hams.

However, there were also glorification writings as L’Eccellenza e Trionfo del Porco (Excellence and Triumph of the Pork) (1594) where Giulio Cesare Croce, from Emilia Romagna, wrote:

“If you want to stay healthy all year long, kill the pig”, together with the famous saying “everything but the oink” (when pigs are butchered, nothing is wasted).

This saying, together with the pork meat consumption, remained popular in rural culture, particularly in areas long dominated by sharecropping, as Central Italy.