A painter can say things well beyond the narrative of an incident drawn from a literary source. Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s The Fall of Icarus fits the ticket as a philosophical narrative….
According to Greek legend, Icarus fell to his death in the sea when he flew too close to the sun on a pair of wings invented by his father,Daedelus. The wings were a composite of feathers and wax, the latter not a good ingredient when confronted with heat. Daedelus, for his part, was more cautious, flying as it was in the jet stream and did not nosedive into the water. The standard interpretation revolves around vanity of pride and ambition, but is this correct?
—Pieter Bruegel’s painting, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus dating from around 1558, has been much discussed in relation to its primary source in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (8.183-235). While many of the critical comments center around the differences Bruegel innovatively highlighted in contrast to his Ovidian quotation, with Faber’s recent careful analysis coming immediately to mind, (4) it is almost universally agreed that the painter’s allusions were deliberate, especially in the triple appearances of the fisherman angling (harundine pisces), shepherd (pastor) and plowman (arator) as a motif in Met. —click image for source…
Bruegel found meaning in a kind of reverse emphasis. Icarus does not seem to be in the picture at all. The most conspicuous figure is the plowman, head tilted toward the soil, and who is not even part of the legend. Beyond him is a shepherd, looking up with mild curiosity towards a speck in the sky. Around these figures is a land and seascape of great beauty, ships moving across water. Icarus, or at least his small legs have just disappeared into the water with a small splash, lost in the picture’s detailed patterns.
Bruegel’s comment then is along the lines of the “pulse of life” whereby personal tragedy is insignificant in the grand scheme of things. The boy’s death and the father’s anguish mean little in terms of a larger pattern. In addition, it is also a comment on human indifference to the suffering of others, and above all, the loneliness of the individual. The idea however, is not in harmony given the serenity, depth and calm beauty of the picture, a kind of consolation that individual troubles are absorbed within a greater order.
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