THE LAND OF COCKAIGNE with searchable details

This is a moral landscape with little hint of the Utopian overtones others have stressed. Nelli sees overblown indulgence and unfettered pleasure as leading only to the deterioration of the human condition.
 
NICCOLO NELLI
The Land of Cockaigne
etching 1564
 
40 x 53 cms.
 
 
The depiction of the land of Cockaigne was a popular subject- allowing the narrator to fantasise on food for free - horses born with saddles and fish that leap out of the river and offer themselves as food. A poem in Dutch of 1567 describes (among other facilities) tarts that cook themselves and fences made of sausages.
Look out for Breughel's celebrated painting of the subject (1567) , and listen to Elgar's Cockaigne (In London Town) Concert Overture Opus No.40. which the composer meant to be 'stout and steady' rather than a moral reflection on an excess of provender.

A print borrowed to scan from Hollyman and Treacher.

PETER BRUEGEL, THE LAND OF COCKAIGNE, 1567 ENGRAVING