Dozens of villagers dance on a grassy clearing in the shade of tall trees. In the foreground a woman in a blue-gray skirt and white apron stands with her back to us, a man in a blue vest and white hose kicks out his leg as he whirls, and a woman in a white cap and red skirt turns beside him. Many men wear hats and prominent codpieces, and the women wear white caps.

At the right a bagpiper in a red vest plays beside a thatched hut, and further back couples talk, embrace or watch from among the trees. The wedding guests are simply modeled, the museum says, with arms and legs exaggerated to make the dancers look awkward, and none is named. The Detroit Institute of Arts calls it a splendid example of Pieter Bruegel the Elder's fascination with the rural life of his native land, and dates it to 1566. Bruegel's contemporaries would have noticed its moralizing overtones: frenzied dancing and lustful behavior could lead to sin and damnation. A conservation study found that the underdrawing is in black chalk rather than charcoal.

The museum bought it in 1930, the second museum in the U.S. to acquire a Bruegel. It is in the Detroit Institute of Arts in Detroit.