Venerable Idleness, Queen of Cockaigne; a fat woman seated on a movable toilet chair being waited on and fed by seven women
1565
Medium
Engraving
Dimensions
Sheet: 11 1/2 × 16 5/16 in. (29.2 × 41.5 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1959
Accession Number
59.570.345
Tags
Art Historical Context
In the whimsical yet satirical engraving *Venerable Idleness, Queen of Cockaigne* (1565), Italian artist Nicolò Nelli depicts a plump woman enthroned on a portable toilet chair, embodying slothful excess as she is pampered and force-fed by seven attendants. Created during the Renaissance, this print captures the mythical land of Cockaigne—a fantastical utopia from medieval folklore where food rains from the sky, walls are made of pudding, and labor is obsolete. Nelli uses this exaggerated scene to poke fun at gluttony and idleness, vices often lambasted in moralistic art of the era. As an eng...