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Why This Mysterious Painting Still Has Experts Debating After 500 Years

Christopher P Jones
8 min readJan 31, 2025

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The Land of Cockaigne (1567) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Oil on panel. 51.5 × 78.3 cm. Alte Pinakothek, Munich, Germany. Image source

This painting, made by Peter Bruegel the Elder in 1567, may be one of the most unusual and fascinating visions of paradise in art history.

Within the fantastical scene, roasted geese obligingly place themselves on silver platters, while pigs wander past with carving knives already strapped to their flanks, ready to serve themselves to hungry diners.

The Land of Cockaigne takes its name from a mythical realm of endless plenty — drawn from Northern European peasant folklore — where earthly pleasures exist in graspable abundance.

Art historians have long been tempted to consider the image as a warning against idleness and overconsumption. But this approach seems to me to miss some of the painting’s best and most particular qualities. It forgets to experience the image, to let one’s eye ponder the peculiar scattering of the figures, for instance, or to range over the beguiling swell of the land on which they lie.

Bruegel’s intention wasn’t to paint a cliché, but to unravel through paint a comical satire on human desire and excess, and a meditation on the cycle of life itself.

In all, it makes for a magnetic work of art.

Easy pickings

The Land of Cockaigne (1567) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Oil on panel. 51.5 × 78.3 cm. Alte Pinakothek, Munich, Germany. Image source

Look carefully. Immediately, we see three men sprawled beneath a tree, satiated into sleep or deep repose by the easy pickings around them.

Above them, wrapped around the central tree — the axis of the painting — a table is positioned at a tilt. In this way, the offer of pig trotters, eggs and roasted rabbit seemingly glide directly into the mouths of the reclining men.

This sloping feel pertains to the whole canvas. Notice the pitch of the underlying landscape, which appears to lurch and shift, and the way the mound of grass seems to camber as if the earth itself is full to bursting.

The three men represent different contributors to society: one is a farmer sleeping on his threshing…

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