BRUEGEL, Pieter the Elder
(b. ca. 1525, Brogel, d. 1569, Brussel)

The Land of Cockaigne

1567
Oil on panel, 52 x 78 cm
Alte Pinakothek, Munich

A peasant, a knight and a scholar are lying with full bellies under a tree around the trunk of which a tabletop has been fixed. The squire, wearing some pieces of the knight's armour, is keeping watch, hoping that something will fly into his mouth. Behind the fairy-tale fantasy of the land in which there is nourishment in abundance lies the experience of ever-recurring famine.