Pieter Bruegel’s painting of The Land of Cockaigne depicts insights to the viewer through subtle and subliminal messages. Bruegel’s main topic throughout all of his paintings are the peasants. He shows his insights on their lives, accuracy in depiction and perspective on them. In this specific painting, his accuracy in depiction and perspective views are supported by the simple act of painting the peasant, knight and scholar around the tree. The lives of the peasants were undoubtedly filled with long tiring days of physical labor. All of their hard work was rarely acknowledged and they were left to live on small portions of food that could never satisfy a human. After all of this famish the peasants commonly daydreamed of lands, such as Cockaigne,
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One may think that gluttony and sloth – from the seven deadly sins - are represented here. The peasants are not actually doing this, they are thinking it which is no different than dreaming of riding horses. I can defiantly say that is painting is anything but sardonic. If Bruegel’s goal was to present the peasants this way, he wouldn’t have added the knight and scholar to the picture. Without the two others, the peasants are being looked down from a higher up godlike perspective, they look pathetic. They are the only ones daydreaming about such “luxurious to them” (food and freedom of morals). By adding these two, the knight and scholar show themselves on the same level as the peasants in this case scenario of daydreaming. The godlike look is now towards a population and is not setting aside a certain group. The knight and scholar have less of a purpose to show their own sufferings - small as they are - but to make sure that this painting isn’t taken the wrong way. The actual particulars about the painting with the knife in the pig, the sausage fences etc… are simply his interpretation of this area. Other interpretations of the three people consist of them being three spokes of a wheel but offer little to no explanation
One may think that gluttony and sloth – from the seven deadly sins - are represented here. The peasants are not actually doing this, they are thinking it which is no different than dreaming of riding horses. I can defiantly say that is painting is anything but sardonic. If Bruegel’s goal was to present the peasants this way, he wouldn’t have added the knight and scholar to the picture. Without the two others, the peasants are being looked down from a higher up godlike perspective, they look pathetic. They are the only ones daydreaming about such “luxurious to them” (food and freedom of morals). By adding these two, the knight and scholar show themselves on the same level as the peasants in this case scenario of daydreaming. The godlike look is now towards a population and is not setting aside a certain group. The knight and scholar have less of a purpose to show their own sufferings - small as they are - but to make sure that this painting isn’t taken the wrong way. The actual particulars about the painting with the knife in the pig, the sausage fences etc… are simply his interpretation of this area. Other interpretations of the three people consist of them being three spokes of a wheel but offer little to no explanation