Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus
Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, 1560
By NATALIE BEYER

Pieter Bruegel the Elder was a Netherlandish painter and printmaker who received a great deal of his inspiration from Bosch. He is known for his peasant and landscape scenes, such as Landscape with the Fall of Icarus and others. He was also known as Bruegel the Peasant just because he spent so much of his time with peasants getting new ideas for his future paintings. However, like this painting, there are hidden gems laying in inconspicuous places. With a man and his mule tilling farm land to a man herding sheep, to boats sailing out into the distance, one would think that this painting is just depicting peasant life. But, in the lower right corner of this painting, Icarus is drowning.

The Greek myth of Icarus begins with Daedalus, Icarus' father, who had the talent of inventing and creating amazing machines. Asked by the King, Minos, to build a labyrinth to hold a Minotaur, Daedalus built an amazing labyrinth. But, both Daedalus and Icarus were imprisoned there. To escape from this prison, Daedalus built two pairs of wings. However, before leaving, Icarus' father warned that if he flew too close to the sun that the wax holding them together would melt. Icarus flies too close to the sun and his wings fall apart and he begins to fall. Icarus plunges to his death in the sea as depicted by Bruegel in the corner. 
  • 7:00 AM

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus and "Learning to Fly"

Isabel Thomas
Pieter Bruegel, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, 1555-58





A fatal attraction is holding me fast,
How can I escape this irresistible grasp?

Icarus, son of the craftsman Daedalus, could not keep his eyes from the circling skies. Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, Icarus lost all rationality when his father fashioned him a pair of wings out of feathers and wax.  Daedalus warned Icarus not to fly too far from the ground, but, once he took flight and found himself above the planet on a wing and a prayer, Icarus’s excitement replaced his reason, and he lost track of his distance from Earth. When Icarus noticed the feathers loosening from the melting wax of his wings, he realized that he had flown too close to the sun and remembered all of the unheeded warnings as he plummeted back to Earth.

 Like many of his other works, Pieter Bruegel’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus has its subject in the background. Bruegel’s paintings are also distinguished by their incorporation of common folk, as exhibited by the worker in the foreground. While comical, the apparent insignificance of Icarus’s downfall symbolizes the lessened emphasis of such religious tales in an evolving society. Laborers replace religious figures, and the mix of secular and spiritual themes in painting characterize the Northern Renaissance.

 Into the distance, a ribbon of black
Stretched to the point of no turning back.

  • 8:03 PM

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus
Pieter Bruegel, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, 1595

At first glace, Pieter Bruegel’s Landscape with Fall of Icarus illustrates in great detail, a distinct perspective drawn from the ocean’s horizon to the stone pathway in the front, the birth of spring, and like in many other of Bruegel’s paintings, a peasant tending to everyday chores like plowing. However in the bottom right corner is the faint splashing of a drowning Icarus.  As Bruegel paints Icarus’ fast disappearing legs as a minor detail, the Northern painter strategically undermines the observers by challenging them to look deeper into that of the composition and reflect on the Bruegel’s intentions of integrating this tale Ovid into his 16th century painting.

For those of you unfamiliar to the legend of Icarus, it begins with Icarus’ ability to fly from imprisonment when his father Daedalus makes his son wings out of feathers and wax. While Daedalus warns Icarus not to fly too close to the sun, Icarus ignores his father’s orders and nevertheless flies so close to the sun that his wings melt, and he falls into the sea and drowns.

In Bruegel’s composition, Icarus’ death goes seemingly unnoticed in the birth of spring as the farmer focuses on his horse leading them back to the city and the Shepard stares up into the sky. While the peasant in the bottom right corner seems to acknowledge the drowning prisoner, he does not take action. The artist has further utilized the setting sun and the laxness of the peasants in regards to Icarus’ death to symbolize the insignificance of one individual in comparison to the vast landscape.

William Carlos Williams supports this in his poem, which takes the same title as the painting. “…sweating in the sun that melted the wings’ wax unsignificantly off the coast there was a splash quite unnoticed this was Icarus drowning”.  His poem does not dwell on the imagery of the painting, and his lack of punctuation understates Icarus’ plunge into death. As Bruegel composes an ordinary life for the peasants, as they tend to daily activities that allow them to survive the best they can, Bruegel draws attention to the northern humanism in which there was less of a focus on education. The poem ends harshly to reflect the lack of empathy for Icarus in the painting. Moreover, he portrays Icarus’ death as a punishment for his self-absorption and defiance of his father’s respectful advice. With that, I believe that Bruegel has blatantly showed his observers the painful irony of death, in hopes to demonstrate the insignificance of selfishness in the midst of life.

  • 7:00 AM

Water Graves - Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

Bruegel
Water Graves 
Reflections on the Illusions of Drowning in Art
Curated by Taylor Schwartz

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus,  1558
“Proud of his success, the foolish Icarus forsook his guide, rising upon his wings to touch the skies; but as he neared the scorching sun, its heat softened the fragrant wax that held his plumes; and heat increasing melted the soft wax—he waved his naked arms instead of wings, with no more feathers to sustain his flight. And as he called upon his father's name his voice was smothered in the dark blue sea, now called Icarian from the dead boy's name.” Metamorphoses, Ovid
In another of Ovid’s myths, Icarus, son of the craftsman Daedalus, is given a pair of wings made out of feathers, wax, and leather, given to him by his father as a method of escape from the island Crete. Ignoring the warning from his father, Icarus flew too close to the sun, eventually melting the wax and leading him to his death.

In Bruegel’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, the farmer and plough seen in the foreground dominate the composition, a strange but effective choice on Bruegel’s part. The yellow-tinted light highlights the banks of the bay, drawing the eye away from the title character. It is only after the eye moves toward the right of the composition that the viewer sees Icarus. Well, part of Icarus. His flailing legs are the last to plummet into the cold green sea. Icarus will inevitably drown, a consequence brought about by his ignorance. But in a way, Icarus, in this depiction, has already drowned. He has drowned in the landscape of this chaotic composition, his existence forgotten. Such is the nature of the cruel sea.

His suffering will forever be ignored as the peasants of the foreground continue to wade through long days and short nights. In his poem, “Musee des Beaux-Arts,” W. H. Auden writes “In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away/Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,/But for him it was not an important failure” (14-17). It is a tendency for man to bury things he cannot withstand or cannot worry himself with. He buries them in work, play, and love. We all have memories, regrets, and losses condemned to the benthos of our subconscious. We just pray that they don’t resurface.

  • 12:00 AM