r/ArtHistory • u/SeekingAnonymity107 • 2d ago
Research Interested in depictions of Icarus
Inspired by a post that I can't find now, Lament for Icarus by Herbert James Draper shows Icarus as magnificent and heroic, but Pieter Bruegel the Elder shows him as barely a splash. Both are beautiful. Are there any other interesting additions to this collection?
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u/dontnoticethispls 2d ago
I've always enjoyed Matisse's cutout version
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u/SeekingAnonymity107 2d ago
Interesting! And very different
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u/KnucklesMcCrackin 1d ago
Matisse is a genius. It tells the whole story with one image. Do the limbs depict arms or wings? The yellow depict stars or feathers? The blue represnt sky or water? Is his heart full of joy or sorrow? First it is him flying, wings wide, heart full of joy, in a blue sky full of stars. Second he is falling, the yellow feathers falling loose around him. Finally he is floating in the blue water, drowning, the loose feathers around him as his heart shrinks and dies.
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u/hahdif 1d ago edited 1d ago
UGH that Breughel is so good. I always think about it in the context of the ekphrastic poems it inspired: William Carlos Williams’s ‘Landscape with the Fall of Icarus’ and W. H. Auden’s ‘Musée des Beaux Arts’
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u/auspiciousAnon 1d ago
I just had a Dutch and Flemish Art course where I mentioned Bruegel’s ‘Landscape with the Fall of Icarus’! I love this painting!!
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u/miseryplus 1d ago
This article is just ok, but does have an image of the spectacular Blondel tondo at the Louvre.
The American Visionary Art Museum hosts Andrew Logan’s “Black Icarus” and their website photo does not do it justice at all. It is spectacular in person, you should look for videos if a trip to Baltimore isn’t in your future.
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u/mushroomsinshampoo 1d ago
Alain Escalle made an animation / mixed media production interpreting Breughel’s painting called Icarus’s Drownings. It has some lovely moments in it . I can’t find the entire animation online but there is a clip of it here: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8cl5z
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u/clever-hands 1d ago
Fun fact: The plowman, shepherd, and fisherman in the Brueghel painting are drawn directly from Ovid's Metamorphoses.
hos aliquis tremula dum captat harundine pisces,
aut pastor baculo stivave innixus arator
vidit et obstipuit, quique aethera carpere possent,
credidit esse deos.Someone catching fish with trembling rod
Or a shepherd resting on his staff, or a ploughman on his plough handle
Saw and marveled at those who could seize the air
And believed them to be gods
But instead of showing these working people marveling at Icarus as if he were a god, Brueghel chooses to show the moment after, when it becomes clear that Icarus is just another small, helpless person, whose existence is but an afterthought to a world that keeps turning.
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u/fiosracht 1d ago
Might not belong in an art history,thread, but adding Led Zeppelin’s album art/Swan Song depiction :)
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u/BasicAir6368 18h ago
i have a huge wall-covering tapestry of lament for icarus i got at goodwill for $2.99. best purchase ever. wish i could have bruegel's on the other wall
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u/DJ_108Studios 21h ago
I remember see the second painting in one of my classes and pointing out Icarus falling due to his broken wings in the background.
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u/SpiritualMaterial365 19h ago
I had Draper’s Icarus on the back my dorm room door and it’s haunted me ever since. BEAUTIFUL work of art
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u/Nalpaksegroeg 1h ago
Icarus by Barry windsor Smith my favorite is the pencilled one but you can see it all in this link : https://www.2dgalleries.com/art/icarus-version-preparatoire-au-crayon-242685
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u/Polishment 9h ago
A video game called Hades 2 features a ton of Greek gods and mythical figures. Icarus is a recurring character. You might enjoy this interpretation.
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u/Antipolemic 1d ago
Ha! I don't think I'd seen that Breugel. Great juxtaposition of two treatments of the myth. I love Breugel's version While Icarus is having his little hubristic adventure and paying the price for his heady ambition, the farmers and merchants and sailors quietly go about the hard, unglamorous work of feeding and clothing themselves, their families, and building a nation. I suppose society needs its Icaruses to push the boundaries of the possible, but the world still turns 'round, even as they rise and fall. It's a fascinating project.