Landscape With The Fall Of Icarus

Research Note #5: “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus”

Paragraph A: Pieter Bruegel the Elder, a Renassiance painter, was known for his naturalistic approach to representation of peasant scenes and landscapes based on observation, along with the utilization of atmospheric perspective and fine details. Originally attributed to him, the “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus”(Item#10) is based on William Carlos Williams poem The Fall of Icarus, in which Icarus falls into a spring while plowing the field and drowns unnoticed. Concurrently, with this concept the main focus is not Icarus but rather the man on the left of the painting tending to his cattle. In addition, the ship near Icarus continues along its designated route, ignoring the presence

Within the novel, chapter three adopts a sub-focus analyzing the possibly reasons for the story of Icarus and the various myths that contradict the integrated phrase, “En de boer hij ploegde voort”(the farmer he plowed forth). Modern interpretations of Icarus’ story attribute his fall to the creativity of the poet, dismissing the myth and simultaneously concluding that it is an inspiration piece for aeronautical and astronomical adventure contains aspects of intellectual merit such as the idea that: “the conquering of the sky by man now becomes equal to birds, or even God.” On the contrary, other individuals perceive the story as containing a latent warning that is cautionary in its attempt to instill obedience in the child and avoid the precluded dangers associated being young and carefree. Although both explanations are consistent with the story-and similar to “the most photographed barn in America”- merely a construction of varies perceptions, the Rogerian explanation that establishes a compromise deems the space aspects of the myth and warning as coexistent. A fall as tragically dramatized as Icarus’, yet completely dismissed, awaits all individuals that allow themselves to be “weighed down” by “the arrogance of creative genius”(hubris). Concurrent, with the original depiction the paradoxical message of the depiction results in the viewer’s involuntarily visual recognition of the irony of the artistic piece and concomitant experience of the irony of meaningless death in the midst of everyday