A roughly-dressed and coarse-looking shepherd sits on a log playing the bagpipes while three goats rest nearby. In Dutch and Flemish peasant scenes bagpipes often symbolised male sexual desire through a deliberate emphasis on their phallic shape. Figures of musicians in a landscape were usually used to create a pastoral idyll but here that tradition is subverted through the focus on the rustic and lustful figure of the shepherd.

1 Related People