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...
Jacques du Fouilloux’s La Venerie

Jacques du Fouilloux’s La VenerieHunting (1561)

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...
Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s The Land of Cockaigne (1567)

Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s The Land of Cockaigne (1567)

  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,...
George Gascoigne’s The Noble Arte of Venerie or Hunting (1575)

George Gascoigne’s The Noble Arte of Venerie or Hunting (1575)

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...
Lucas van Valckenborch’s  Herbstlandschaft (Oktober) (1585)

Lucas van Valckenborch’s Herbstlandschaft (Oktober) (1585)

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...
Lucas van Valckenborch’s The Month of May (1587)

Lucas van Valckenborch’s The Month of May (1587)

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...
Thomas Trevelyon’s  Lover’s Picnics in The Miscellany (1608)

Thomas Trevelyon’s Lover’s Picnics in The Miscellany (1608)

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...
Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605)

Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605)

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...
Esaias van de Velde’s  An Elegant Company in a Garden (1614)

Esaias van de Velde’s An Elegant Company in a Garden (1614)

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...
Agostino Carracci’s Landscape with Bathers (1616 c.)

Agostino Carracci’s Landscape with Bathers (1616 c.)

Though it is unmistakably a merienda at the beach, the title given for this painting in the Pitti Palace is Landscape with Bathers. The seashore is a tumultuous blend of barren, jutting rocks. But Carracci, the focus of which is a serene woman dressed in red sitting...
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...
Dirck Hals’s Banquet in the Country (1620c.)

Dirck Hals’s Banquet in the Country (1620c.)

Hals’s Banquet in the Country is a portrait of an aristocratic or merchant family dining alfresco in the garden of their estate. It’s meant to display social importance, status, and wealth. This picnicking subject was one of many Hals painted. See Dirck Hals. Banquet...
Dirck Hals’s De buitenpartij or The Fête Champetre (1627) 

Dirck Hals’s De buitenpartij or The Fête Champetre (1627) 

Hals’s De_buitenpartij (627) is of family and friends dining outside in the garden of their estate. It was meant to show off. Featured Image: Dirck Hals. Debuiten partij or The Fête Champetre (1627). There are two other versions of this group.  Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam...
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...
Paul Scarron’s Repas de pique-nique (1650c.)

Paul Scarron’s Repas de pique-nique (1650c.)

It is rumored that this is how the satirist Paul Scarron was known for his petits soupers, intimate dinners without ceremony, to which guests were invited to dine in the picnic-style, un repas dans le manière pique-nique. Oliver Goldsmith’s “Retaliation” (1774)...
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...