Cristoforo de Predis’s The Garden of Delights (1470c.)

Cristoforo de Predis’s The Garden of Delights (1470c.)

De Predis’ Venus: The garden of delights representing the joyful influence Venus exerts on mortals is an illustration for The Sphere of the Cosmos, De Sphaerae  (1466 or later). The original treatise dating from 1230c describes Venus’ feast day celebrated when Venus...
Albrecht Dürer’s Hercules at the Crossroads (1498c)

Albrecht Dürer’s Hercules at the Crossroads (1498c)

Xenophon’s Memorabilia of Socrates (371BCE) tells that when Hercules was approaching manhood, he was given a choice of a life of pleasure or a life of Virtue. While sitting at a crossroads and considering his future, he is approached by two immortal women, Virtue, in...
Giovanni Bellini’s Feast of the Gods (1514)

Giovanni Bellini’s Feast of the Gods (1514)

When Alfonso d’Este, the Duke of Ferrara, and his wife Lucrezia Borgia, asked for a painting expressing worldly delights, drinking, and sensuality, Giovanni Bellini could not refuse the offer though he was eighty-five and in failing health. The Feast of the Gods...
Titian’s The Bacchanal of the Andrians (1523-26)

Titian’s The Bacchanal of the Andrians (1523-26)

Titian’s The Bacchanal of the Andrians has the appearance of a picnic devoted to drinking. Sometimes called The Stream of Wine on the Island of Andros, it relates the miracle in which spring water is transformed into wine. In the foreground, the legend on the sheet...
Bernard Van Orley’s Les chasses de Maximilien (1531-1533)

Bernard Van Orley’s Les chasses de Maximilien (1531-1533)

Van Orley’s The Month of June is part of a series of tapestries called The Hunts of Maximilian [Les Chasses de Maximilien. The June episode depicts an elaborate Orley halt on the hunt [halte de chasse]at which Archduke Maximillian (later Emperor of Austria) is...
Daniel Hopfer’s  Peasants at Table at a Rustic Festival (1535c.)

Daniel Hopfer’s Peasants at Table at a Rustic Festival (1535c.)

Hopfer’s Peasants at Table at a Rustic Festival [or Tafelnde Bauern beim dorflichen Fest or Peasants at Table at a Rustic Festival, also called a kermesse, may celebrate a patron saint, though in this instance, it seems secular, most likely, a celebration of spring....
Bonifacio Veronese’s Moses Rescued from the Water (1540-1545)

Bonifacio Veronese’s Moses Rescued from the Water (1540-1545)

Veronese’s Moses Rescued from the Water is a fête champêtre, and Pharaoh’s daughter enjoys alfresco entertainment. Surrounded by courtiers and ladies waiting, Pharaoh’s daughter’s pleasantries are interrupted when Miriam presents her with the infant Moses. The scene...
Lucas Cranach, the Elder’s The Fountain of Youth (1546c.)

Lucas Cranach, the Elder’s The Fountain of Youth (1546c.)

Cranach’s paintings often conflate the spiritual and erotic, particularly The Fountain of Youth and The Golden Age, both completed in 1546.  The subjects seem pagan, but his friendship with Martin Luther deeply influenced Cranach. The Fountain of Youth...
Lazarillo de Tormes’s  Merienda (1554)

Lazarillo de Tormes’s Merienda (1554)

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...