#62 The Harvesters — Coaster

It is one panel from a set of six painted for an Antwerp merchant's dining room, one for each stretch of the farming year. Five survive. This is August, and what makes it strange for its date is that nothing holy is happening — no saint, no myth, no lesson. Just wheat, a pear tree, and a man asleep on his back with his legs apart, which is very likely the first honest depiction of a worker's lunch break in European art. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.