The Egg Dance
Also titled De eierdans
Pieter Aertsen (Amsterdam, 1508–1575)
1552
- Medium
- panel, oil paint (paint)
- Classification
- painting
- Dimensions
- height 84 cm x width 172 cm
- Museum
- Rijksmuseum
- Rights
- Public Domain Mark, as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
About this work
At right, in this brothel, a young man does an egg dance to the music of a bagpiper. While dancing, he had to roll an egg within a chalk circle – without it breaking – and to cover it with a wooden bowl. This ‘pointless’ amusement, along with the dissolute behaviour of the other figures, served as a moral warning against debauchery.
