Existing comment:
NICCOLĂ’ NELLI
Italian, c. 1533 - c. 1575
The Land of Cockaigne
1564
etching
Rosenwald Collection, 1964
Cockaigne was a paradise described in texts from the thirteenth century onward, including Boccaccio's Decameron. In that magical land the pleasures of the senses are limitless. Niccolò Nelli, a prolific Venetian printmaker and publisher, rendered Cockaigne as a map filled with amusing vignettes of its wonders. Birds rain from the sky onto the table, fish fling themselves from the water. Mountains are made of every kind of spice and a lake is filled with Greek wine. Anyone caught working is imprisoned for a year. Vices, bad feelings, and of course Death are barred at the entrance. Moralizing irony is explicit in the prefatory tablet at right: "This geography is the creation of a certain Mr. Lie." |