La danza del huevo

The game that gives this painting its name was a real one. On a spring feast day, to the drone of a bagpipe, a player would use only his feet to roll an egg out of a bowl, keep it inside a chalk circle, and then flip the bowl upside down over it without breaking the shell. Aertsen, working in the Netherlands in 1552, sets it in a crowded tavern of drinkers and dancers. Almost nothing here is innocent. The bagpipe, the onions hung in the window, the eggs scattered on the floor all carried bawdy meanings his first viewers would have caught at once, so the moral warning against loose living doubled neatly as an excuse for a lively, suggestive scene. In the doorway behind, a second group dances on.