The Garden of Paradise recasts in a contemporary Hortus Conclusus as an allegory of life before the Fall. Tucked into a protected garden, free from original sin, homage the Virgin Mary and the baby Jesus are at ease. The secluded garden offers serenity in a busy...
When Edward Langley, 2nd Duke of York, translated Gaston’s Le livre de chasse (1389) into English, French was still the language of the Court and elsewhere. He renamed it The Master of Game.* Like Chaucer, Edward’s translation decided to write in English...
Larned’s recipe for a picnic staple: Chicken Salad “Cook chicken in boiling water, when half done add salt, a slice each of salt pork, lemon, and onion, a bit of bay leaf, and a piece of red pepper. Cool in the stock, drain, and cut in cubes. Cover them...
Piero’s primary resource is Ovid’s Metamorphoses (XII). Ovid does not mention the wedding guests dining alfresco in a picnic style. But Piero prominently depicts a white embroidered picnic cloth in the center of the composition. In other details, Piero is...
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...
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...
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...
Brant illustrates Aeneas and his crew a regular luncheon meal set at a table. Aeneas sits in a chair (left), listening to his son Ascanius say, “See, we devour the plates which we fed.” See Sebastian Brant. Works of Virgil [Publius Vergilius Maronis...
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...
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...
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....
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...
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...
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...
Billy Wilder’s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes is mostly a comedy comprised of mismatched episodes, the second of which concerns a search for a secret British laboratory in Scotland and an attempt by a German spy to seduce Holmes. The search leads Holmes, Watson,...
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...
