![]() This is a busy but not a bustling landscape and there is a distinct sense of measured movement in the human activities Brueghel portrays. You may have been struck by the difficulty of finding Icarus in the scene – even if we could stand in front of this large canvas, the white legs disappearing into the water are hardly central. ![]() How would you describe its content if you were not familiar with the myth of Icarus?.Does your knowledge of the Ovidian narrative affect your response to the painting?.Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, 1560, oil on canvas mounted on wood, 74 x 112 cm Figure 3 (repeat) Pieter Brueghel the Elder. There is no attempt to create an image of the ancient world: the ships, the dress of the human figures and the tools they use are contemporary with Brueghel, late sixteenth century. Nobody seems to notice the drowning Icarus, unless maybe the tiny figure climbing the rigging of the nearby ship. Two or three smaller ships sail into the distance. A rocky coastline fades into the distance: a few islands are visible in the green sea: a sizeable town with a harbour lies in the distance to the left, and another, smaller town, appears on a headland on the right. Beyond the drowning Icarus a finely delineated sailing ship heads away from the scene. Immediately above the fisherman, disappearing into the green waves of the sea, are two slim legs – the left leg kicking upwards, the right already submerged in the foam. In the lower right-hand corner a fisherman sits on a rock, gazing downwards into the water beside him, a partridge perches on the branch of a bush. Just left of the trunk of the tallest tree, its trunk rising above the horse’s harness, is what appears to be a human skull, largely hidden in the shadowed undergrowth. To the left of the sheep, more trees, in spring leaf, frame the image. Beyond the pasture and a small clump of trees, the land drops steeply down to the sea that occupies the central area of the painting. Both ploughman and shepherd face towards the left of the picture, the former concentrating on his task, the latter gazing upwards. A thin hedge straggles along the further edge of the field, separating it from an area of rough pasture grazed by a flock of sheep, tended by a shepherd who leans on his stick with his dog sitting quietly beside him. ![]() ![]() Strong low light from the setting sun on the horizon casts crisp shadows of the ridges of soil turned by the plough, and less precise shadows are cast by the ploughman, the plough and the horse. He guides a horse-drawn plough that cuts a striking pattern of furrows across a tiny, undulating field in the foreground. Brueghel’s painting centres on a ploughman – the dominant figure in the landscape. ![]()
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