Pieter Bruegel the Elder
With some of the paintings, we highly encourage you to read the description and tap the painting to zoom in. This is definitely one of these paintings!
The Wedding Dance is a great illustration of Bruegel's deep interest in the rural life of his homeland. He drew inspiration from the various festivities and celebrations, both public and private, that offered him a wealth of typical scenarios and characters for his artwork. In this piece, the wedding attendees are depicted with simplicity, their limbs positioned slightly exaggeratedly to emphasize their clumsy and unrefined dance moves. While modern viewers may appreciate this work primarily for depicting everyday life, Bruegel's contemporaries would have recognized its cautionary message. It subtly critiques the excesses of wild dancing and lascivious behavior, suggesting such actions could lead to sin and eternal damnation.
The painting shows a group of 125 wedding guests wearing clothing from the times, presented on the canvas in an apparently chaotic way in an outdoor party surrounded by trees. The brides wore black as it was the Renaissance period, and the men wore codpieces, which were an important part of their clothing at the time.
Watch out, you can spend hours on spotting all the tiny details here!
P.S. Here's another famous wedding painted by Pieter Bruegel. Are you ready to join the celebration? :)
P.P.S. Do you know that you can buy high-quality reproductions of paintings in our Shop? We have Bruegel's artworks in our selection as well!