The Fall of Icare

Authenticity

The experts and the critics do not agree all on the authenticity of this work. In short, there exist two versions (one on fabric and the other on panel), inventoried under the same title, without signature nor date. For some, they would be even two copies. Today, it seems attested that oil on wood where one sees Dédale flying in the sky, that is to say a copy, although critics consider it of a better invoice.

Description

Let us leave these assumptions to the specialists to describe this fabric simply. In a view from above, the glance stops initially on the characters: a peasant who plows his field, a shepherd pressed on his stick, a fisherman of back which tightens its wire. The red of the blouse of the plowman and the scarf of the fisherman draws the attention to their occupations. When the eyes can be detached some, one discovers the depth of quasi infinite space. At the horizon, the Sun form a disc which irradiates and links purple sky with emerald of the sea. The mountains which border this one appear unreal, white and light, as the port which wakes up in a pink light.

The spirit enjoys to admire this harmonious and peaceful landscape but the eye, irresistibly returns to the red blood of the foreground, towards this peasant absorptive by his task. We see it skew, the scene being built in diagonal and the impression of a work continuous, methodical, being done, is accentuated by it. Behind him, the clear spots of the ewes guide the glance towards the beige veils of the ship which passes. It is time then to discover the “details” of this daily scene.

Close to the boat, precisely, in front of the rock, the sea wrinkles… and two legs are agitated. It is that Icare is drowning in the indifference of the entourage and nature! Icare, culprit to be itself approximate a little too much close to the sun, Icare which believed to face the laws of gravity and the human condition, plunges in the major green emerald and nobody notices it. Not even the partridge of which the glance vague and remote points out that of the shepherd who turns the back on the drama. One wrote much on the direction of this representation of the Mythe of Icare and interpretations divergent.

Analyzes

Source of the table

a fisherman who teases fish of the end of his flexible Gaulle, a shepherd pressed on his crook, a plowman guiding his plow see them passing both. Astonished, they take for gods these men able to fly in the airs. Already, on their left, disappeared Samos, liked of Junon; they exceeded Délos and Paros; on their line Lébinthos and Calymné, famous for its honey appear, when the teenager, enivré by the daring feeling of the flight, deviates from his guide. Giving up itself with the giddiness of the skies, it gains altitude. It is there that with the approach of the burning sun, the odorous wax which maintains the feathers becomes soft. It melts. Icare agitates its naked arms in vain: deprived of wings, it is not supported any more in the vacuum. It calls his father, then disappears in the azure from the floods from this sea which one names since sea Icarienne.

Ovide, the Metamorphoses , delivers VIII

Interpretations

Bruegel illustrates a passage of the Métamorphoses of Ovide. As often, the painter takes the reverse of the tradition, the back of the things and distills his irony discreetly. If the characters of Ovide are represented for the first time, essence is reversed: people at the one day's work old dawn do not have time to lose with the ambition of insane or a dreamer. It is necessary to sow and fish, it is necessary to retighten the ropes so that the ship, like the life, advances towards the light or gold philosophal, according to a esoteric reading.

Stoical and Humanistic, Bruegel expresses the agreement of the man with the laws of the Univers of which he is only one small portion. With the foreground, the sword and the purse, posed close to the plowman, evoke one of these popular proverbs that Bruegel illustrated in other tables:

“Sword and money require astute hands. ” (van Lennep) Pierre Francastel develops another theory which has the merit to locate the painter in the historical context of its country. Icare incarnates also courage, the positive adventure of those which dare. Prisoner of Minos, it with the will to flee and audacity to test. It is the ingeniousness of his/her father, Dédale, which provides him the means of it. Its only “defect” is to succumb to the grisery of the success. It is young still. Maze remains the blacksmith, the artist and the brilliant creator. At the 16th century, the myth finds an echo in this country under foreign domination: it is the call of freedom and the dream of escape… The life continues, yes but the questions remain posed: is any attempt liberator dedicated to the failure? There is not more place for the dream? Isn't the indifference the most dangerous shelf for the human adventure and progress?

Work could be an ironic judgment of the vanity of Icare, appears which often appears in the books of emblems like a exemplum of pride, as well as Phaéton or Nemrod (see the Tower of Babel and Pride in the series of the Seven deadly sins ). This is why Robert Baldwin, analyzing the Iconography table, could see in the figure of the plowman in the foreground a Allégorie of the hope or hope, which would be opposed then to the allegory of the fall, echo of the original fall which composes the background of the sufferings of the deposed man, condemned to repurchase itself by his work. W.H. Auden, in its poem Icarus , is more sensitive to a certain indifference of the men and nature vis-a-vis the individual tragedies. The structure of the table suggests also separation in diagonal of the dream and reality.

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