Peter Brueghel the Elder is considered a genre painter. And indeed, his paintings depict scenes from the lives of ordinary peasants and townspeople who dine, skate, dance at weddings, plow the land.
But periodically, he introduces biblical motives or legends into such simple subjects. The look of a brilliant artist on the subject is unexpected and paradoxical. Such is the picture of Brueghel "The Fall of Icarus."
Daedalus Crime
Daedalus was a talented Athenian artisan, a descendant of the first mythical king of Athens. Its inhabitants of Hellas knew and respected for their ingenuity and skill. But once he envied his nephew and student. It seemed to Daedalus that the student would surpass him in mastery, that the young man was destined to become more than a simple successful artisan: inspiration came upon his nephew when he saw the movements and jaws of the snake and wanted to create a saw. In Daedalus’s soul, everything turned upside down with envy, and he threw the apprentice into the sea from the mound of the Acropolis. But the goddess Athena prevented the complete death of the young man, turning him into a partridge (her viewer of the painting "The Fall of Icarus" will see on the canvas).
The escape
However, the gods punished Daedalus, exiling to the island of Crete, where his son Icarus was born. Daedalus planned to escape with his son from Crete and created wings from feathers and wax. He accurately explained to his son that one must fly both not high and not low. But Icarus, carried away by freedom of flight, soared too high. The wax of the wings has melted.
As a result, Icarus fell into the sea, and he drowned. His body carried the current to the island, where Hercules found it and put it to the earth. Thus, Daedalus' atrocity against his nephew turned out to be brutally avenged.
Peaceful life
In the central part of the composition is depicted a plowman whose face the viewer does not see.
This is a faceless image typical of Bruegel. The peasant, whom no one had dared to place in the center of the composition before, is quietly working. Incidentally, this is a secondary character, but it is he who attracts attention. The day is clear and beautiful. The plowman is full of his thoughts about sowing, about how the seedlings will go, and whether the crop will be good. The figure of the peasant is quite proportional; she plays, as it happened in earlier Brueghel paintings, a subordinate role. So, the peasant is calm and does not notice anything around him. No movement, no fall of Icarus the plowman disturbs.
Shepherd and ships
However, the shepherd, who is watching a flock of lambs on the edge of the cliff, is surprised to look at the sky. For there he saw the unprecedented. Perhaps he did not even understand what exactly. And high in the sky, Daedalus soared in horror. He saw that his son, forgetting his instructions, soared to the sun and had already fallen into the sea. A shepherd does not look at the sea. And next to it is a ship. Everything is calm on it too. No one notices the sinking and rushes to his aid. From Icarus, if you look closely, only a leg remains on the surface. There was nothing left of this and a handful of feathers from the wings. But if anyone sees what is happening, then this is a gray partridge sitting on a bush, on a cliff above a calm fisherman who is also passionate about his business and does not notice a drowning man. Partridge's keen interest in what is happening is understandable: it is completely avenged. Retribution has come true. This is the plot of the painting "The Fall of Icarus."
Scenery
All the action takes place against the backdrop of Brueghel's beloved calm peaceful landscape. Brownish in the foreground tones of the earth and greenish trees in the background, the blue expanse of the sea, bathed in the unsharp light of the sun, is a typical Dutch landscape. And the whole picture is illuminated by its calm light, giving life to all living things.
If Daedalus was guilty, it was he who should be punished, and not the young man, to whose death all the characters of the picture were indifferent. Indifference and indifference are the main characters that Brueghel ("The Fall of Icarus") created. This found a continuation in our life: a person passes by someone’s misfortune with an empty look and meaningless standard words.