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Landscape with the Fall of Icarus
After Pieter Bruegel the Elder · Renaissance & Mannerism
- Artist
- Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525–1569), or a copy after him
- Date
- c. 1560
- Dimensions
- 73.5 x 112 cm
- Medium
- Oil on canvas (transferred from panel)
- Location
- Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels, Belgium
This calm coastal landscape illustrates the Greek myth of Icarus, who flew too close to the sun on wings of feathers and wax and fell into the sea. But the drama is almost invisible: only a pair of legs splashing into the water in the lower right shows what has happened.
A closer look
In the foreground a ploughman steadily turns the soil, a shepherd gazes at the sky and a fisherman casts his line, all indifferent to the catastrophe. A great ship sails past, and the sun sets over a shimmering bay. The painting seems to illustrate a Flemish proverb, 'no plough stops for a dying man', and to reflect on how ordinary life carries on regardless of individual tragedy. Technical studies suggest this famous version is probably an early copy of a lost original by Bruegel.
More by After Pieter Bruegel the Elder
Famous works elsewhere
- Dull Gret 1563
- The Peasant Dance 1568
- Two Chained Monkeys 1562
- The Triumph of Death 1560
- The Blind Leading the Blind 1568
- The Magpie on the Gallows 1568