Cockaigne was a mythical paradise of plenty for hard-working people. This print was a copy of Pieter Bruegel’s 1567 painting named “lazy, luscious land” in Dutch, translated to Land of Cockaigne. Some accounts of Cockaigne claimed one had to eat through a cloud of pudding to enter. This is depicted in the top, left corner. Pigs and fowl are already cooked and ready to eat. On the right, a bird flies into the mouth of a man resting in a house with a roof made of pies. The fence in the background is made of sausages. Food grows on trees above the resting clerk, peasant, and soldier.
Print, after c. 1570, attributed to Pieter van der Heyden after “Land of Cockaigne” by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Image featured in Discovering Quacks, Utopias, and Cemeteries: Modern Lessons from Historical Themes by Cynthia Resor