Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

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For the poem by William Carlos Williams see Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (poem)

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, c. 1554-55

oil on canvas

73.5 × 112 cm

Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus is a famous landscape by Pieter Bruegel. It was referred to in a poem of the same name by William Carlos Williams, and in W. H. Auden's poem Musée des Beaux-Arts, named after the museum in which the painting is housed.

The painting seems to depict humankind's indifference to suffering by highlighting the ordinary events which continue to occur, despite the unobserved death of the mythic figure Icarus, who is seen drowning in the bottom right area of the sea.

In Greek mythology, Icarus was the son of Daedalus, famous for his death by falling into the sea when he flew too close to the sun, melting the wax holding his artificial wings together.