Picturing Abundance
I like your example of abundance--a photo of dinner.
I've always liked renaissance still lifes of tables of food. Food was a natural subject for an artist--familiar, colorful, poseable (and still!), but I think those paintings conveyed a strong sense of the human-scale importance of a meal. The extravagance of commissioning an expensive, giant painting of a table overflowing with food must have been a really strong statement.
Cosmo makes a good point, one that I'll keep in mind next time I'm bored looking at slightly disgusting Dutch paintings of food. (As I mentioned earlier, I prefer architectural paintings, like this or these.)
"I especially like the ones with exotic seafood or with a pet that gets to share in the bounty," he concludes. Like these:
