![]() ![]() He emphasizes the “immeasurable expanse” of the landscape at the expense of the people who are “but a fraction of the painting’s surface” and emphasizes “man’s insignificance” compared to the world as a whole. Auden continues, for example, “…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….” 1īruegel chooses to focus on the apparent inattention of the ploughman, the fisherman, and the shepherd. In Ovid’s version, there is a ploughman, a fisherman, and a shepherd who each sees the pair and stands “amazed.” Ovid makes no mention, though, of their response to Icarus’s tragic fall, and perhaps we are made to assume, like both Bruegel and Auden, that these men, engaged in their own work-ploughing, fishing, shepherding-don’t respond to it. The myth has been immortalized throughout our cultural history. failing to heed his father’s warning.) As Daedalus and Icarus are about to set flight, Daedalus cautions Icarus to take a middle course, neither flying too high where the blistering sun can melt the artificial wings he has fastened together with wax nor too low where the ocean’s moisture can weigh them down. ![]() attempting to fly like the gods) and the hubris of his adventurous son (e.g. 4 The myth is about the inability of a father to protect his son both from his own hubris (e.g. As a participant in the humanist circles in Antwerp, considered the artistic and commercial center of the Netherlands at the time, Bruegel would have been familiar with Ovid’s classic. Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, circa 1558, by Pieter Bruegel the Elder Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels.īruegel’s inspiration derives from the myth of Daedalus and Icarus, poignantly depicted in book VIII of the Metamorphoses 3 by the Roman poet Ovid. 1558) by Flemish artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Auden in his poem Mus ée des Beaux Arts in response to his viewing the painting Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (c. “About suffering they were never wrong / The Old Masters…how it takes place / While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along.” 1 So wrote W.H. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |