Icarus
How to Read Paintings: Landscape with the Fall of Icarus by Pieter Bruegel
A fascinating retelling of the story of youthful ambition
The artist who made this image, thought to be Pieter Bruegel or one of his followers, has painted an expansive landscape.
In the far distance there are mountain ranges, towns and cities. In the middle distance, Portuguese-style ships move across a calm sea carrying cargo between trading posts. Up close, a shepherd minds a flock of sheep whilst a farmer ploughs a small stretch of land. The red of the farmer’s shirt stands out boldly against the green-blue tone of the wider painting.
One tiny detail among this array of activity, though easy to miss, ought to catch our eye: in the bottom right-hand corner, notice a pair of legs kicking as they disappear into the water.
These legs belong to the young man from Greek myth named Icarus. He has attempted to fly using wings made from birds’ feathers and wax, but the wings have failed him and he has plunged headlong into the water.
The fall of Icarus is but a tiny detail in Bruegel’s painting but it adds a profound echo that reverberates curiously and fascinatingly through the rest of the work. The image, measuring 73.5 by 112 centimetres, has relegated its central theme to the outer margins – but then this is the point.
The story of Icarus
Let’s begin with the story of Icarus, who lived on the island of Crete with his father Daedalus.
Daedalus was a renowned craftsman and inventor who worked for King Minos. It was Daedalus who devised the maze known as the Labyrinth in which the Minotaur — a creature with the body of a man and the head and horns of a bull — was kept. It was also Daedalus who gave the King’s daughter, Ariadne, a ball of thread to help her lover Theseus escape from the Labyrinth after killing the Minotaur.
Daedalus and Icarus were imprisoned by Minos for helping Theseus. Desperate themselves to escape, Daedalus used his inventor skills to fashion a pair of wings from feathers and quills. He also made a pair for Icarus so they could abscond together. But he warned Icarus not to fly too high in the sky, nor too near the sea. “My son, I caution you to keep the middle way, for if your pinions dip too low the waters may impede your flight; and if they soar too high the sun may scorch them.”
The father and son successfully took flight from their imprisonment, but Icarus “bold in vanity” began to soar on his wings and flew too close to the sun. The heat began to melt the wax that held the wings together, and Icarus’ flight ended in the sea.
The story of Icarus and his father Daedalus has been represented many times in literature and art. Two alternative themes emerge, transforming the tragic tale into one of moral allegory. The first is as a symbol of man’s inventiveness and aspiration. The second is the one favoured by Renaissance moralists, of Icarus’s fall from the sky as an allegory of youthful pride and the dangers of going to extremes.
The passage from Ovid’s Metamorphoses that describes Icarus and Daedalus’s flight appears in Book 8, lines 183–235, from which the following excerpt of Icarus’s fall is taken:
“Proud of his success,
the foolish Icarus forsook his guide,
and, bold in vanity, began to soar,
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.”
(Translation by Brookes More, 1922)
A typical representation in art shows the father and sun airborne over the Aegean sea, with islands in the background from which they are escaping from or to, sometimes with a tower representing their imprisonment. Often the sun is shining brightly or sometimes the sun-god Helios is shown riding his chariot across the sky. The foolhardy Icarus is usually shown tumbling towards the water whilst his father looks on helplessly.
Bruegel’s treatment
Returning to Bruegel’s painting, it is quite obvious that the story of Icarus has been displaced by a new emphasis – one of landscape and the people who live in it.
Bruegel’s interest in landscape and people runs through many of his paintings: he was an artist who painted images of folk-life, capturing the occupations and social lives of contemporary Netherlandish towns. As in the Icarus painting, he often painted small figures in panoramic vistas, taking an elevated vantage point over the scene.
What we have in Bruegel’s painting, then, is a deliberate foregrounding of ordinary people occupied with everyday activities.
In Ovid’s account, the ploughman, shepherd and fisherman are said to be “astonished and think to see gods approaching them through the aether”, yet in Bruegel’s painting they appear far less amazed. The ploughing farmer has not noticed at all, whilst the shepherd gazes up at the sky with a casual look of wry puzzlement.
The fortunes of Icarus become a momentary distraction as the day comes to an end. The sun is about to set over the sea — not at its zenith as the traditional telling of Icarus would have it. In other words, time moves on and soon enough a new day will begin. The world has other considerations.
The poet W. H. Auden reached a similar conclusion when he wrote of the painting in his poem Musee des Beaux Arts, from 1938. Here’s an excerpt:
In Bruegel’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; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
posted by Aloyzio Achutti at 3:44 PM
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