Jacopo Bassano’s depictions of peasants were not made for peasant eyes, but nonetheless offer to redeem their culturally low subjects. Rather than understanding Bassano’s imagery of this kind as a product of his essential localness, it is argued in this article that his turn to the rural world of the immediate area in which he worked reflects Bassano’s wider connection to the increasingly cosmopolitan and non-local world of European culture in his period. Close examination of a small number of key Bassano paintings featuring peasants throws new light on his way of accommodating non-peasant values (aesthetic but also economic and religious) into peasant imagery that was quickly exported to locations and viewing audiences far beyond the small rural town of Bassano del Grappa where they were produced.