Crispijn de Passe’s Picnic in New Mirror for Youth (1617)

Crispijn de Passe’s Picnic in New Mirror for Youth (1617)

Early in the 16th century, Dutch emblem books primers or handbooks for youthful aristocrats. Among the more socially and sexually suggestive of these books are The Garden of Love [Hortus Voluptatum] (1599) and New Mirror for Youth [Nieuwen ieucht spieghel] (1617),...
Filippo Napoletano’s Merenda sull’erba (1619)

Filippo Napoletano’s Merenda sull’erba (1619)

Napoletano’s Merenda sull’erba is a landscape with Florentines enjoying an informal outdoor lunch by a lake. Merenda is Italian for picnic, which was not coined until 1649 in Paris. The picnickers have spread their cloth in the shade. To the left, a cook works at a...
Giovanni Passeri’s  A Party Feasting (1645c.)

Giovanni Passeri’s A Party Feasting (1645c.)

Passeri’s A Party Feasting in a Garden seems like a happy end to an alfresco luncheon. Young couples are deep in conversation, flirting, and courting, which suggests this is a garden of love. It is casual and innocent, though Passari is a moralist. Close examination...
Jan Miel’s  La Merienda and Hunters at Rest (1640s/50s)

Jan Miel’s La Merienda and Hunters at Rest (1640s/50s)

Miel’s halt on the hunt and repas de chasse depicts hunters stopped by a rustic inn. In the Prado’s La Merienda, hunters have spread a cloth beside their horses and are settling in to relax. This is a perfunctory meal of sliced ham, cheese, bread, and wine. Unlike...
Wenceslaus Hollar’s The Trojans’ First Meal in Latium (1654)

Wenceslaus Hollar’s The Trojans’ First Meal in Latium (1654)

Hollar illustrates the key moment in Virgil’s Aeneid (19 CE) when Aeneas realized that he had reached the land where he would build a new city where Trojans would prosper. The chosen moment is when Aeneas and his crew bivouac in a forest clearing in Latium and...
Oliver Cromwell’s Picnic in Hyde Park (1654)

Oliver Cromwell’s Picnic in Hyde Park (1654)

Cromwell, the Lord Protector of England, “picnicked” in Hyde Park in 1654. According to Cromwell’s secretary of state Edmund Ludlow, “His highness, only accompanied with secretary Thurloe and some few of his gentlemen and servants, went to take...
John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667/74)

John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667/74)

Milton never uses the word picnic or any synonym but knows the concept and uses it freely for satiating Adam and Eve in Paradise before the Fall in Paradise Lost. Because they had no means of cooking, Milton supposes that Adam and Eve were inadvertent Vegans...
Samuel Pepys’ Diary (1664 & 1667)

Samuel Pepys’ Diary (1664 & 1667)

Pepys’s “frolique” is a euphemism for a picnic, which did not exist as a word in English. It was among his favorite ways to spend an afternoon with friends idling. It was a favorite way for him to spend an afternoon with friends idling. We know this...
Ludolf Bakhuizen’s Picnick aan zee  (1701)

Ludolf Bakhuizen’s Picnick aan zee (1701)

Bakhuizen embellished this seascape (his usual subject) with a group of picnickers. Picnick ann zee’s contemporary title is appropriate but inaccurate because picnic was not applied to an alfresco meal in 1701. Pique-nique had only been included in Gilles...