Saturday, August 29, 2009

I remember this painting from the museum

No caps in the title.

Anyway, the painting is entitled "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus" and is by Pieter Bruegel.



I love that Icarus is just a small detail in the bottom corner. (If you can't see him right away, look at the bottom right corner, in the water- you can just see his legs sticking out.) Love love love it for making the main object of the painting such a small aspect in the overall scheme- you get an idea of how it really might have been. The farmer and the shepherd are too busy working to see the young man falling to his death, while it is unclear what the fisherman is up to (he must see Icarus but since we know that Icarus died in this episode, it must suggest that the fisherman let him die). Icarus seems pretty close to the shore- like he could walk even, but perhaps he was dazed by the fall. This eerily reminds me of Kitty Genovese (the woman who screamed to thirty people as she was stabbed and was saved by no one- Wikipedia Entry).

Several sources about this painting mentioned the Flemish proverb, which may have motivated Pieter: "No plough stands still because a man dies."

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