  About the Artwork
  
  
  The Wedding Dance is a splendid example of Bruegel's fascination with the rural life of his native land. Public and private holidays and festivals provided him with typical situations and characters for his paintings. Here, the wedding guests are very simply modeled, the positions of their arms and legs somewhat exaggerated to make the dancers look more awkward. Although a modern audience might see this panel primarily as a genre painting, Bruegel's contemporaries would have noted its moralizing overtones: frenzied dance and lustful behavior could lead to sin and damnation.
  
  
  Title
  The Wedding Dance
  
  
  Artwork Date
  1566
  
  Artist
  Pieter Bruegel the Elder
  
  
  
  Life Dates
  1525-1569
  
  
  
  
  Nationality
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Definitions for nationality may vary significantly, depending on chronology and world events.
  Some definitions include:
  Belonging to a people having a common origin based on a geography and/or descent and/or tradition and/or culture and/or religion and/or language, or sharing membership in a legally defined nation.
  
  
  
  Netherlandish
  
  
  
  Culture
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Cultures may be defined by the language, customs, religious beliefs, social norms, and material traits of a group.
  
  
  
  
  Flemish
  
  
  Medium
  Oil on wood panel
  
  
  Dimensions
  Unframed: 47 × 62 inches (119.4 × 157.5 cm)
  Framed: 57 1/4 × 72 × 3 1/2 inches (145.4 × 182.9 × 8.9 cm)
  
  
  Classification
  Paintings
  
  
  Department
  European Painting
  
  
  Credit
  City of Detroit Purchase
  
  
  
  Accession Number
  
  
  
  This unique number is assigned to an individual artwork as part of the cataloguing process at the time of entry into the permanent collection.
  Most frequently, accession numbers begin with the year in which the artwork entered the museum’s holdings.
  For example, 2008.3 refers to the year of acquisition and notes that it was the 3rd of that year. The DIA has a few additional systems—no longer assigned—that identify specific donors or museum patronage groups.
  
  
  
  30.374
  
  
  Copyright
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