Merienda first appears in the anonymous picaresque novel The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes in 1554, * ninety-five years before the French word pique-nique in 1649. It is used to denote a snack. But when Francesco de Quevedo uses merienda in El Buscon (The Swindler), it...
Fouilloux’s La Venerie, aka Hunting, differs from Gaston’s 1389 description (See Le livre de chasse). Accordingly, the assemblée is replaced with un repas chasse, a hunters’ lunch attended only by men. However, when George Gascoigne adapted La...
Bruegel the Elder’s The Land of Cockaigne, aka Het Luilekkerland, makes you think it’s a picnic. Not. It’s a satirical look at Cockaigne, a mythical place where it’s always spring and never winter, in which life is all play and no work,...
Gascoigne adapted Gaston Phébus’s The Book of the Hunt (1380) and Jacques du Fouilloux’s in La Venerie (1560) into English, retitling the work The Noble Arte of Venerie or Hunting (1575). (The book is dedicated to Lord Clinton, Elizabeth’s master of...
Valckenborch must have loved dining, food, and wine. His paintings are filled with depictions of meats, fish, and fruits, so he might be called a painter of feasting. His calendar paintings, such as the one celebrating October’s bountiful grape harvest, include an...
Valckenborch’s Spring, aka Frühlingslandschaft (Mai), depicts the new season arousing a desire for revelry after winter’s confinement. It’s part of a series of calendar paintings celebrating the months of the year and appropriate seasonal activities. Though, in this...
Feast In The Park Of The Duke Of Mantua, or Fête dans le Jardin du Duc de Mantoue, is picnicky but not a feast. The curators of the Musée des Beaux-Arts probably assigned the title. It is a garden of lovers dining alfresco in an imaginary architectural setting. The...
Trevelyon’s Miscellany is a meticulously illustrated compendium of 1608. It’s stocked with a calendar, scenes from the Bible, current events, court, political figures, costumes, fabric designs, games, dances, etc. It’s among the marvels of bookcraft...
Cervantes’s merienda looks like a picnic on the grass. It occurs while, Don Quixote and Sancho engage in a spirited discussion of the uses of enchantment and the power of imagination with the Canon, the curate, and the barber. They sit on the grass waiting for...
Van de Velde’s reputation is now based on his naturalistic landscape. But he was in demand among the affluent Amsterdam community, for whom he painted many scenes of their parties, especially garden parties, of which An Elegant Company in a Garden is an exemplar. The...
