Landscape with the Fall of Icarus
Landscape with the Fall of Icarus | |
---|---|
Artist | Pieter Bruegel the Elder |
Year | c. 1560 |
Medium | oil on canvas |
Dimensions | 73.5 cm × 112 cm (28.9 in × 44 in) |
Location | Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels |
Landscape with the Fall of Icarus is a painting in oil on canvas measuring 73.5 by 112 centimetres (28.9 in × 44.1 in) now in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels. It was long thought to be by the leading painter of Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting, Pieter Bruegel the Elder. However, following technical examinations in 1996 of the painting hanging in the Brussels museum, that attribution is regarded as very doubtful, and the painting, perhaps painted in the 1560s, is now usually seen as a good early copy by an unknown artist of Bruegel's lost original, perhaps from about 1558. 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",[1][2] although recent technical research has re-opened the question.
Largely derived from Ovid, the painting is described in W. H. Auden's famous poem "Musée des Beaux-Arts", named after the museum in Brussels which holds the painting, and became the subject of a poem of the same name by William Carlos Williams, as well as "Lines on Bruegel's 'Icarus'" by Michael Hamburger.[3]
Though the world landscape, a type of work with the title subject represented by small figures in the distance, was an established type in Early Netherlandish painting, pioneered by Joachim Patinir, to have a much larger unrelated "genre" figure in the foreground is original and represents something of a blow against the emerging hierarchy of genres. Other landscapes by Bruegel, for example The Hunters in the Snow (1565) and others in that series of paintings showing the seasons, show genre figures in a raised foreground, but not so large relative to the size of the image, nor with a subject from a "higher" class of painting in the background.
However, paintings from the same period by the Antwerp artist
Description
In
The ploughman, shepherd and angler are mentioned in Ovid's account of the legend; they are: "astonished and think to see gods approaching them through the aether",[5] which is not entirely the impression given in the painting. The shepherd gazing into the air, away from the ship, may be explained by another version of the composition (see below); in the original work there was probably also a figure of Daedalus in the sky to the left, at which he stares. There is also a Flemish proverb (of the sort imaged in other works by Bruegel): "And the farmer continued to plough..." (En de boer ... hij ploegde voort") pointing out the ignorance of people to fellow men's suffering.[6] The painting may, as Auden's poem suggests, depict humankind's indifference to suffering by highlighting the ordinary events which continue to occur, despite the unobserved death of Icarus.
Attribution
The painting is probably a version of a lost original by Bruegel. A date of c. 1558 has been suggested for the lost original, based on Bruegel's other works;[5] the copy probably comes from the 1560s or soon after. It is in oils whereas Bruegel's other paintings on canvas are in tempera.[7]
The work was unknown until it was bought by the museum in 1912; subsequently another version on panel, generally considered inferior, turned up, which was acquired in 1953 by Daniel van Buuren for his private house, today a
Since its acquisition by the Museum in 1912, its authenticity has been challenged by several specialists, mainly for two reasons: (i) the relatively weak quality of the painting compared to other Bruegels, although this question is complicated by later overpainting; (ii) it is an oil painting on canvas, an exception in the work of Peter Bruegel the Elder who made all his oil paintings on panel.[citation needed]
In 1963, Philippe Roberts-Jones, curator at the museum, and the Bruegel specialist Georges Marlier, hypothesized that an original panel painting had been later moved onto canvas, as was once common.[citation needed]
Scientific tests
In 1998, a mixed team of scientists from the Belgian
A sample of blue paint taken from the right edge in 1973 was re-examined by performing analysis such as scanning electron microscopy (SEM) coupled to the energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), which in connection with optical microscopy revealed the following structure and composition. From bottom to top:
- Canvas (from transposition);
- Oily lead white (adhesive);
- Thick oily layer with azurite (repaint);
- Chalk ground;
- Oily lead white with scarce particles of charcoal;
- Oily blue with azurite;
with layers 4 to 6 being original.
The presence of chalk ground under the original blue proves that this is a panel painting transposed on a canvas. The original blue layer is lead white with azurite containing a few grains of ochre and charcoal. These structure and composition match perfectly those found on other certified panels of Peter Bruegel. Moreover, it is noticeable that the wood charcoal particles are very peculiar, being very long and acicular, exactly the same as those found only in The Census from the same Museum.[10]
Recently, a study of the underdrawing using
A re-interpretation of the reflectograms in agreement with the other analysis suggested the conclusion that the work in the Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels is a panel painting transferred to canvas. The paint layer and maybe also the underdrawing have been severely damaged by this intervention as well as by two more relinings, responsible for the heavy overpainting. In the paint sample remains a fragment with structure and composition matching perfectly the technique of the large panels attributed to Peter Bruegel the Elder. It is therefore unlikely that this version of the Fall of Icarus might be from the hand of a copyist, except perhaps from P. Bruegel the Younger. Conversely, the Van Buuren copy with a different technique cannot be attributed to either Peter Bruegel.
Mentions in other media
The painting is shown in Nicolas Roeg's film The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), where a character opens a book of paintings to an image of it. On the facing page a description points out that the scene remains calm, the event of the fall hardly noticed. The painting also figures into the Walter Tevis novel on which the film is based. The characters of Newton and Bryce discuss the painting near the end of chapter four, part two. Tevis also mentions the painting in his 1980 novel Mockingbird. In chapter five of the first section narrated by the character Mary Lou, the robot Spofforth brings the painting to her.
Eric Steele, whose film
Composer Brian Ferneyhough's 1988 chamber work La Chute d'Icare was inspired by the painting:
What this piece attempts to suggest is ... less a reflection on the heroic-tragic dimension of the underlying myth than a transcription of the strange sensation of "already having been" which is brilliantly evoked by Breughel in the view of a world serenely pursuing its own concerns, completely oblivious to the almost invisible tiny pair of legs waving pathetically out of the water, the only record of the apocalyptic event being a pair of feathers floating disconsolately down in the wake of their erstwhile owner.[13]
The painting features prominently in Frank Ceruzzi's
The painting was included in the 1980 television series 100 Great Paintings.
The painting is mentioned by W. H. Auden in his 1938 poem, "Musée des Beaux Arts", in which Icarus's fall is perceived by the ploughman as "not an important failure".
The painting is also the subject of the Titus Andronicus song "Upon Viewing Bruegel's Landscape with the Fall of Icarus":
In the painting from the original song, in the corner, you see this tiny guy falling into the ocean. It's been interpreted as: It's a big world, and people go about their business, and little tragedies are happening all the time, and what are you going to do?
— Patrick Stickles, Titus Andronicus[14]
The painting appears in a background of the music video for the song Blood Sweat & Tears by South Korean group BTS. The video opens in a museum with another Bruegel painting, "The Fall of the Rebel Angels" featured prominently. [15]
References
- ^ Says the Museum: "On doute que l'exécution soit de Pieter I Bruegel mais la conception Lui est par contre attribuée avec certitude", Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium. "Description détaillée" (in French). Archived from the original on 27 March 2012. Retrieved 3 September 2011.
- JSTOR 3780948.
- ^ Rico, 19 (gives text)
- ISBN 9783822847909
- ^ ISBN 3-8228-1531-4.
- Hunt, Patrick. "Ekphrasis or Not? Ovid (Met. 8.183-235 ) in Pieter Bruegel the Elder's Landscape with the Fall of Icarus". Archived from the originalon 2009-07-10.
- ^ JSTOR 1506730.
- ^ de Vries:4
- ^ Roberts-Jones, Ph.; Reisse, J.; Roberts-Jones-Popelier, F. (2006). "La chute d'Icare: mise au point et controverse". Bull. Académie Royale de Belgique. 1–6.
- ^ Kockaert, Leopold (2002). Bruegel's Fall of Icarus at the Laboratory. Symposium Brueghel enterprises, Brussels 20–21 June 2002.
- ISBN 978-2-930054-14-8.
- ^ Holden, Stephen (27 October 2006). "NYT Critics' Pick – The Bridge (2006): That Beautiful but Deadly San Francisco Span". The New York Times. Retrieved 29 July 2012.
- ^ Ferneyhough, Brian. "La Chute d'Icare (program note)" (PDF). Edition Peters. Retrieved 2014-11-13.
- ^ "Titus Andronicus". Pitchfork Media. Retrieved 2020-04-19.
- ^ "BTS (방탄소년단) '피 땀 눈물 (Blood Sweat & Tears)' Official MV". YouTube. October 6, 2016.
Further reading
- de Vries, Lyckle, "Bruegel's "Fall of Icarus": Ovid or Solomon?", Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art, Vol. 30, No. 1/2 (2003), pp. 4–18, Stichting voor Nederlandse Kunsthistorische Publicaties, JSTOR
- Kilinski II, Karl (2004). "Bruegel on Icarus. Inversions of the Fall". Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte. 67 (1): 91–114. JSTOR 20474239.
External links
- "Online exhibit" on the painting, from the Royal Museums via Google Arts and Culture
- Museum & Gardens Van Buuren, home of the 2nd version