The depicted plowman carries on with his task while the shepherd seems unaware of the event, gazing into the air, away from the ship. All the artist painted is a pair of legs kicking in the sea next to the big ship on the right side of the composition. At first glance, it is not easy to notice the spot where Icarus fell. The iconic painting of the Fall of Icarus in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium is an amazing World Landscape, a type of composition depicting an imaginary panoramic landscape seen from an elevated viewpoint that includes mountains and lowlands, water, and buildings. While he worked and issued his warnings the aging man’s cheeks were wet with tears: the father’s hands trembled… but the boy did not listen… he began to delight in his daring flight, and abandoning his guide, drawn by desire for the heavens, soared higher… and disaster stroke! And I order you not to aim towards Bootes, the Herdsman, or Helice, the Great Bear, or towards the drawn sword of Orion: take the course I show you!’ At the same time as he laid down the rules of flight, he fitted the newly created wings on the boy’s shoulders. He instructed the boy as well, saying ‘Let me warn you, Icarus, to take the middle way, in case the moisture weighs down your wings, if you fly too low, or if you go too high, the sun scorches them. The myth of Icarus’s Fall is magnificently told by Ovid in Book VIII: 183-235 of his Metamorphoses… When Daedalus had put the last touches to what he had begun, the artificer balanced his own body between the two wings and hovered in the moving air. The ancient Greek Myth of Icarus has endured not only in visual but in literary arts as well! The Fall of Icarus attributed to Pieter Bruegel the Elder( According to the museum: “It is doubtful the execution is by Bruegel the Elder, but the composition can be said with certainty to be his”) is a fine example of how the Visual and the Literary Arts complement each other! Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, circa 1558, oil on canvas mounted on wood, 73.5×112 cm, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium
Pieter Brueghel the Elder, attributed, 1526/1530–1569