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 fire; to the left, a servant brings fish from the river.
Featured Image: Filippo Napoletano’s Picnic on the Grass (1619), oil on canvas, Uffizi Gallery, Florence
See Thomas Cole’s Pic-Nic (1842), which depicts middle-class Americans picnicking in an open clearing in a forest.