''Landscape with the Fall of Icarus'' is an
oil-on-canvas
Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments with a medium of drying oil as the binder. It has been the most common technique for artistic painting on wood panel or canvas for several centuries, spreading from Europe to the rest of ...
painting by
Flemish
Flemish (''Vlaams'') is a Low Franconian dialect cluster of the Dutch language. It is sometimes referred to as Flemish Dutch (), Belgian Dutch ( ), or Southern Dutch (). Flemish is native to Flanders, a historical region in northern Belgium; ...
painter
Joos de Momper
Joos de Momper the Younger or Joost de Momper the Younger (1564February5, 1635) was a Flemish landscape painter active in Antwerp between the late 16th century and the early 17th century. Brueghel's influence is clearly evident in many of de Momp ...
. It was possibly painted in the 1620s, and is currently housed at the
Nationalmuseum
Nationalmuseum (or National Museum of Fine Arts) is the national gallery of Sweden, located on the peninsula Blasieholmen in central Stockholm.
The museum's operations stretches far beyond the borders of Blasieholmen, the nationalmuseum manag ...
in
Stockholm
Stockholm () is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, largest city of Sweden as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people liv ...
.
Subject
In
Greek mythology
A major branch of classical mythology, Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the Ancient Greece, ancient Greeks, and a genre of Ancient Greek folklore. These stories concern the Cosmogony, origin and Cosmology#Metaphysical co ...
,
Icarus
In Greek mythology, Icarus (; grc, Ἴκαρος, Íkaros, ) was the son of the master craftsman Daedalus, the architect of the labyrinth of Crete. After Theseus, king of Athens and enemy of Minos, escaped from the labyrinth, King Minos suspe ...
succeeded in flying, while attempting to escape from Crete, with wings made by his father Daedalus, using feathers secured with beeswax. Dedalus asked icarus to fly neither too low nor too high, warning him of
hubris
Hubris (; ), or less frequently hybris (), describes a personality quality of extreme or excessive pride or dangerous overconfidence, often in combination with (or synonymous with) arrogance. The term ''arrogance'' comes from the Latin ', mean ...
. Ignoring his father's warnings, Icarus chose to fly too close to the sun, melting the wax. He fell into the sea and drowned.
Painting
To the left, several ships are sailing, coasting steep cliffs. Tall and leafy trees frame the painting to the right; a seaside town stretches in the middle, overhung by fabulous cliffs, which are typical of de Momper and his group of Flemish landscapists.
In the trees' shadow there sits a shepherd, tending to his flock.
There is a fisherman to the left, and a ploughman on their right. These three figures (ploughman, shepherd and angler) are mentioned in
Ovid
Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō (; 20 March 43 BC – 17/18 AD), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the th ...
's account of the legend. In the Roman poet's version, they are: "astonished and think to see gods approaching them through the aether." In contrast to this, there is a Flemish proverb that goes "And the farmer continued to plough..." (''En de boer ... hij ploegde voort'') pointing out the ignorance of people to fellow men's suffering.
The painting was inspired by
Bruegel's painting
of the same name. In de Momper's version, too, the three figures appear to pay no attention to flying men, mistakable for gods. As regards Bruegel's painting, it has been suggested by
W. H. Auden in his
1938 poem, that it depicts humankind's indifference to suffering by highlighting the ordinary events which continue to occur, despite the unobserved death of Icarus.
The painting was taken to Stockholm as booty in 1648.
References
Further reading
* Cavalli-Björkman 1986 , p. 90-91 , met afb. en opgave van herkomst en literatuur
*
External links
Painting at the Netherlands Institute for Art History
{{Authority control
1620s paintings
Landscape paintings
Paintings by Joos de Momper
Paintings in Sweden
Paintings in the Nationalmuseum Stockholm
Paintings based on Metamorphoses