This is a great painting that, like most of the things in here, has more than meets the eye. At first glance, it is just a rather pretty idyllic harbor.
But look in the water in the right hand corner. There we see Icarus, who has fallen because he flew too close to the sun*. We see the different levels of people, the lowest peasant both sees and hear Icarus fall, the second only hears it, and the third and highest doesn't even know it happened. This is a very interesting statement about the nature of people, dont you think?
* For the full Icarus myth, click this link
[URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icarus"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icarus[/URL][/quote]
I just wanted to add something to this: There's an interesting poem by W.H. Audin that uses this painting as an example. Since I'm aware that Audin is not common reading material these days, I'll just include it below.
[I]Musee des Beaux Arts[/I]
[I]About 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.
[B]In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on. [/B][/I]
Just like the painting has more to it than meets the eye, the poem does too. However, I'm not a poet, I'm a historian, so I'll leave the analysis there for those who actually care to do it.
