Here’s what Auden realized…Ībout suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters: how well they understood Its human position how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting For the miraculous birth, there always must be Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating On a pond at the edge of the wood: They never forgot That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse Scratches its innocent behind on a tree. What was the artist trying to convey with this peculiar composition?” For that matter, he wondered what other artists were communicating when they depicted people and animals around the margins who were seemingly missing nearby miraculous events. So Auden, who apparently visited the Museum of Fine Arts in 1938, stood in front of this painting and thought, “Hmm.
In the lower right corner of the picture, his flailing legs are sticking out of the water.Įveryone else in the painting is oblivious to this guy who has fallen from the sky and is drowning. In fact, you have to look closely at the painting to see Icarus at all. That’s one of the odd things about the Icarus painting, though: He’s not the central figure. If a painting is titled, say, “Madonna and Child”, it’s not unreasonable to assume that the composition will prominently include Mary and the baby. Wax was a component of the wings, and when Icarus flew too close to the sun, the wax melted and Icarus plummeted into the sea. You probably remember the Greek myth about Icarus, whose father Daedalus made wings for himself and his son. (Click on the picture above to enlarge it.) Its title is “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus”. That’s the name of a museum in Brussels, Belgium it houses a quirky painting that until recently was attributed to the 16th-century Flemish artist Pieter Brueghel the Elder. Auden had one of those brilliant insights, expressed in a poem he wrote in the late 1930s. Occasionally, though, I’ve heard museum visitors say stuff about the art they were seeing that was so perceptive I’ve wanted to high-five them. When you visit an art museum, a comment you’ll often overhear is “what time are we supposed to be back on the bus?” Other popular topics include the lines for the rest rooms and the prices in the cafeteria. “Landscape With the Fall of Icarus”, attributed to Pieter Brueghel (c.
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