Le Pays de Cocagne

Cockaigne was a medieval fantasy land where food fell into your mouth and no one had to work, a peasant daydream about never being hungry again. Bruegel paints it as a warning. Three men lie sprawled and stupefied under a table, a scholar, a peasant, and a soldier, arranged like spokes of a wheel around the tree. Around them the world serves itself up. A boiled egg walks on legs, a roasted bird lies waiting to be eaten, the fence is woven from sausages, and a pig runs about with a carving knife already tucked in its side. This is gluttony and sloth shown as comedy, but comedy with an edge. Every full belly here has cost the men their wits.