Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

Many years ago, while still a first year at Ellon Academy, my art teacher, Mr (Bill) Smith, gave our class a slide show (long before Powerpoints were a thing) on ‘art’. Most of the class saw art as ‘a skive’ and Mr Smith had his work cut out engaging with so many indifferent 12 year olds, but to his credit he was keen, insightful and not easily deterred. One artist that really stood out for me that day was Bruegel, or rather Pieter Bruegel the Elder, and one particular painting of his... or not, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus.

Bruegels’ work is familiar to many people, stunning landscapes, detailed, lively scenes of peasant life, coupled with a keen insight into human nature and often a dose of black humour. His Landscape with Icarus isn’t typical of his output and I think that’s part of the appeal, the unusual perspectives and placement of the characters, particularly Icarus give it an almost surreal quality, it’s also Bruegel's only subject taken from Greek mythology.

The Icarus story is well known, but just in case... Daedalus, a brilliant Athenian inventor, the man who designed the labyrinth (Theseus and the minotaur), and his son, Icarus, are imprisoned by King Minos. To escape, Daedalus crafted wings made of feathers and wax. Despite his father’s warning not to fly too low and get the wings wet by the sea and too high where the sun would melt the wax, Icarus, overcome by the thrill of flight, flew too close to the sun, melting the wax, causing him to fall into the sea and drown.

Bruegel chose just that moment, Icarus splashing into the sea, to capture, and this is where the plot thickens. The painting here may not be by Bruegel, the current thinking is that it’s a copy of a lost original by him painted in the 1560's, Daedalus for instance should be in the sky, where the shepherd below is looking up at him, the sun, which is also setting should be high in the sky otherwise there’d be no melting wax.

In terms on narrative, like many of Bruegel’s paintings it’s about the common mans worldview in a harsh medieval world and there is also a Flemish proverb or two hidden in there. The Ploughman cutting his neat furrows represents: "No plough stops for the dying man" or "and the farmer continued to plough”. These are also re-enforced by the ship, sailing on unawares and the fisherman busy trying to catch his next meal, the fantastical can wait when there are mouths to feed.

Near the ploughman there are also bags of seed placed on rocks, the original proverb here is "What is sown on rocks cannot grow there" however there’s also the parable of the Sower from the sermon on the mount to consider.

A more sinister hidden detail is the body in the woods, an easily missed, obscured figure lying in the bushes, just above the ploughman’s horse. There’s been various theories, possibly another proverb “Leave the Dead to Bury Their Dead”, allusions to Cain and Abel,

Brueghel did like to hide so many smaller stories in his works.

Either way it all combines to make a beautiful, haunting and poetic piece, in fact long before I was introduced to it W.H. Auden was also sufficiently captivated to write a poem about it. I’d love to climb into this canvas and explore this world further.

...He may not have inspired me to paint at that time, but I believe he did plant the seed, thank you so much Mr Smith