meat was restricted to the upper class, fish was nota common peasant food either. During Lent, when the Church imposed restrictionon meat consumption, fish and seafood were restricted to the rich. But inCockaigne, salmon, sturgeon, herring, and other luxury fish were abundant.Although the poor did have access to wine, the drinkwas also quite present. Why is that, if the menu on Cockaigne seems to be thereverse of that in real life? One possible explanation is that wine has alwaysbeen associated with happiness, well being, and torpor. A land with freepermissiveness could not do without the red drink. One of the mostrepresentative portraits of Cockaigne, a 1567 oil painting by the Flemishpainter Pieter Bruegel, shows three lying satiated men. The men are half awakeand one of them has his pants unbuttoned probably from overeating. But an emptywine jug on a tree shelf provides evidence that in addition to more than plentyfood, the three men also drank a considerable amount of wine.Pieter Bruegel, the Eldder. The Land of Cockaigne, 1567Oil on panel. Alte Pinakothek, Munich, Germany.The last food item that overwhelms in the depictionsof Cockaigne is sweets. Sugar, which is only known to French Cuisine as of the14th century, was considerably expensive at that time, so dessert items, such as pastries, pies, and cakes were never on the table of thepeasants. This was, instead, a luxury of which they could only dream, and thusquite present in the representations of Cockaigne.It is not difficult to imagine that what was part of thereal diet of the lower classes would not be part of their fancy. Likewise,Cockaigne had no space for bread, by far the most consumed food item of thepoor, responsible for a vast majority of the 2,000 daily calories consumed perday (Franco, 2013). For the same reason, vegetables, fruit, soup, butter, andmilk were not on the menu of Cockaigners either. Other food items that were not available on the menuof Cockaigners were spice and olive oil. Oskar Herrfurth (1862-1934),, series of six postcards, Uvachrom. 354, no. 5087, pre-1934Spice, like cinnamon, cloves, nutmegand pepper, was known to be expensive and its use represented a socialdistinction until shortly after the Renaissance. So was olive oil, regarded bythe well-off as a substitute for butter, which was frowned upon. But inCockaigne, those food items were not necessary, simply due to the fact that noone had to cook! The pigs wandering on the street and the poultry flying infrom the sky to the dishes of the people were ready to eat. No oil was neededto prepare a dish that was certainly already seasoned. And so Cockaigne remained for many centuries as asmall haven of luxury for the struggling Medieval lower class, leaving hints ofwhat those people fancied eating and what they actually put on their table.III. IconographyanalysisLucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553)The fountain of youth, 1546 (Berlin Gamaeldegalerie)The fountain of youth by LucasCranach depicts one of the characteristics of Cockaigne, eternal life andyouth. The portrait has a clear clockwise sequence: Before the bathe, duringthe bathe, and after the bathe. Then the people move onwards to a tent,followed by a lush banquet,