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Dutch & Flemish · a wall in this concept
The Wedding Dance
The Wedding Dance
Pieter Bruegel the Elder, c. 1525–1569
Bought for Detroit in 1930, sight half-unseen, by a director who cabled the city for the money before anyone else could move. There are more than a hundred and twenty-five figures in the crowd, and Bruegel gives every one of them somewhere to be going. Stand close and the dancers separate into faces; step back and they close into one turning machine of celebration. It is among the most famous paintings in any American museum, and it lives on Woodward Avenue.