' The Egg Dance ' Pieter Aertsen . Dutch ( 1507 - 1575 ) Oil on panel circa 1552

There's a cheerful atmosphere in the tavern . Everyone is having fun , drinking and dancing . What is the man in the foreground doing with his left hand nonchalantly resting on the shoulder of the young woman next to him ? She seems to accept his advances and points out the drunkard - the man dancing on eggshells in the middle of the room . Pieter Aertsen has packed his ' Egg Dance ' , a work dating from 1552 , full of double meanings . Egg dancing was a popular game played during the spring time folk festivities . First a chalk circle was drawn on the floor . Then , accompanied by bagpipe music , the player would use his feet to roll an egg out of a bowl , keeping it inside the circle , and turn the bowl upside down on top of the egg . All this had to be done without touching the flowers , leaves or anything else - and of course the egg had to remain whole . The first to succeed would win a prize : usually a basket of eggs . Here the basket is shown in the foreground. At the back of the room an old man is playing the bagpipes . Because of it's shape, the instrument often symbolised male genitalia . In the window is a jug containing a leek , a vegetable of the onion family . A sixteenth- century viewer would immediately have realised that the scene was a room in a brothel . Onions were supposed to be a stimulant . All around lie onion flowers , leek leaves and mussels , which were supposed to have the same quality . It was also thought to be true of eggs , the theme of the painting . Pieter Aertsen has given this piquant scene a moral message that appears to reflect his own moral reservations . A joker is depicted on one of the wooden boards on the table , left , and on the other a goat jumping . These are cards in a Tarot set . In the sixteenth century everyone would have understood that these symbolised drunkenness and lust . The reel above the fireplace on the right is a sign of folly : in fact ' reeling ' is still used today to describe a person swaying or staggering from the effects of alcohol .