Analysis Of The Painting Landscape With The Fall Of Icarus By Pieter Bruegel

Humans really do suck, don't they? In modern society, it would seem to be that humans are starting to become more in tune with nature and also with the people around them. Humans are just now noticing how their excessive use of plastic products such as straws are hurting the oceans and they are just now taking actions against it, banning plastic straws from multiple states around the United States. Humans are also seeing that their abuse towards bees is only going to make them end up like the bees; causing for raised awareness towards declining bee population. Why am I bringing all of this up? Simple, humans have always had a selfish nature lurking in them, even still. Even though we might not think of it applying to today's society with evolution in medicine and technology, life is still survival of the fittest, and those not fit to support themselves without the help of others don't survive. The vast majority of humans seem to only care about things that pertain to them and their own personal issues, with most of them not going out of the way to save others, which can be seen in the painting Landscape with the Fall of Icarus by Renaissance painter Pieter Bruegel.

In the Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, Bruegel shows how selfishness has always been in human nature. In the traditional Greek Myth, The Tragic Story of the Fall of Icarus, Daedalus and his son Icarus are sent to prison on the island of Crete. On Crete, Daedalus gathers enough feathers and wax for both him and his son Icarus to build wings to fly away from the island and escape. Daedalus warns Icarus not to fly too high so that the Sun’s heat would not melt the wax off from the wings and cause Icarus to fall to his death. Ignoring his father's commands, Icarus flew too high and when the wax melted off the wings and he fell down, he drowned in the sea. So looking at the painting, the setting shows a small island in the Aegean Sea (where Icarus drowns in the myth) with nice beautiful colors of the bright blue sea waters and the bright sun in the background. Also in the picture, there features a small ship off in the distance of the sea, small islands scattered around, and mountains in the background.

For the foreground, there are three humans painted; one being a shepherd, another being a farmer, and the last one appearing to be a fisherman. In the water, very close to the shore, appear to be the legs of the fallen and drowning Icarus. This bright and beautiful setting of a gleaming sunny spring/summers day on the Mediterranean takes away from the tragedy of a child's death. The effect that this has it that it makes it seem that what happened to Icarus regarding his death was just as natural as the sea being blue or the leaves on trees on the island being bright green. With this effect being in place, it would seem that the reactions of the three humans on the island; the shepherd, the farmer, and the fishermen would also appear to be natural, that reaction being no reaction at all.

Let's go into depth on what all of the people in this painting are doing. If the center of our image would to be the two legs of Icarus sticking out of the water, then the object closest to them would be the big ship that is sailing towards the shore and towards Icarus. Appearing to be very close to the drowning Icarus, if one of the sailors on the ship took action and jumped off the ship to go and save Icarus or throw a rope down for Icarus to grab, then his death could have been prevented. Likewise the same can be said for the fishermen fishing very close to the edge of the shore and also appearing to be very close to Icarus, but in the painting, even with Icarus being very close to him, he still seems disinterested in going out of his way of saving him and would rather continue on trying to catch fish, in hopes of either selling them for him to make money, or for eating them later for lunch.

Finally for the fishermen, close to the shore appears to be a little boat with a paddle that could have been used to go out into the sea to save the drowning Icarus visible to him. The shepherd and his sheep are the next topics of discussion. In the painting, it can be seen that there are around three or four sheep close to the edge of the shore and the shepherd himself appear to be close to the edge too. When Icarus fell from the heights he was soaring at, he would have most likely caused a loud splash when he made an impact with the water which would have surely caught the attention of either the sheep or the shepherd. Judging from the painting, this was not the case, with the farmer minding his own business, continuing to look off to the left and his sheep continuing to eat, finally, with the farmer who is plowing his fields, the fall of Icarus appears to be no bother to him, who doesn't even look back once to see what that noise could have been and continues to plow his fields. Ironically selfishness is far from you would associate with a farmer, but this painting shows that no human is an exception to selfishness. All of these people could have taken some time out of the activities that they were doing and they could have gone to go save Icarus with the small boat on the shore but with the selfishness of humans, the events of another human’s life do not affect theirs so there is no need to worry about it.

With some research, I found out that towards the end of his career as a painter, Bruegel started to make his paintings focus more on the relationships that humans had between themselves and also their relationships with nature. Particularly, he focused on how both nature and humans only cared about themselves, both of which are evident in Landscape of The Fall of Icarus, with not only the humans on the island tending to their personal issues, but with nature disregarding Icarus. The Sun, whose heat melted the wax on Icarus’ wings, and the sea’s waters where Icarus landed and drowned. Both could have spared Icarus but held themselves over the life of another's. With other research, I found a poem with the same name written by poet William Carlos Williams. In the poem, the lines “the edge of the sea concerned with itself” and “sweating in the sun that melted the wings’ wax” summarize the selfishness of nature in this painting. The sea was only concerned with itself, if it wasn't, it could have caused waves that carried Icarus to the shore, the same with the Sun emitting enough heat to cause the wax to melt. The last line, “insignificantly off the coast there was a splash quite unnoticed, this was the Icarus drowning.”, shows the selfish nature that all humans exhibit, in how the splash caused by Icarus was “quite unnoticed” and “insignificant”. I leave with the question, despite all the progress of technology, research, mathematics etc. have humans truly evolved so that we think of others and their problems rather than only ours?