Daedalus and icarus representations in art and literature

Representations in Art and Literature

Bronze Sculpture of Daedalus 3rd Century C.E. Found in Macedonia

Daedalus Andrea Pisano 1295 – 1348

Relief Campanile, Florence

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus Pieter Brughel the Elder (c.1525 – 1569) Oil on Canvas c. 1560 Royal Museum of Fine Arts Belgium

According to Brueghel when Icarus fell it was spring a farmer was ploughing his field the whole pageantry

of the year was awake tingling near the edge of the sea concerned with itself sweating in the sun that melted the wings’ wax unsignificantly off the coast there was a splash quite unnoticed this was Icarus drowning

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus William Carlos Williams, 1883 - 1963

Daedalus and Icarus Woodcut found Illustrated in Ovid: Metamorphoses

Illustrated by Virgil Solis c. 1569 University of Glasgow, UK

Palazzo Vecchio (Studiolo) Fall of Icarus

Tommaso Manzuoli 1536-71

c. 1570-71 Palazzo Vecchio , Florence, Italy

Daedalus and Icarus c. 1620 by Anthony van Dyck Oil on Canvas Art Gallery of Ontario

Daedalus, wanting to flee Crete, made wings of wax, for himself and for his son [Icarus], to escape the domination of Minos. Icarus falls into the sea, having paid no attention to his father's warnings, while Daedalus escapes to Sicily.

Engraving by Peter Paul Bouche after a drawing by Hendrik AbbĂŠ Print; Book Illustration Text: 1st Century BCE Image Published: 1703 Warburg Instute Library London

'The Fall of Icarus’ 17th century, Musée Antoine Vivenel

Daedalus says:

Go on sonny but remember that you are walking and not flying the wings are just an ornament and you are stepping on a meadow that warm gust is just the humid earth of summer and that cold one is a brook the sky is full of leaves and small animals Daedalus says: Sonny this is not true The Cosmos is merely light and earth is a bowl of shadows Look as here colors play dust rises from above the sea smoke rises to the sky of noblest atoms a rainbow sets itself now

Icarus says:

The eyes like two stones return straight to earth and see a farmer who knocks asunder oily till a grub which wiggles in a furrow bad grub which cuts the bond of a plant with the earth

Icarus says: Arms hurt father from this beating at vacuum legs are getting numb and miss thorns and sharp stones I cannot keep looking at the sun as you do father I sunken whole in the dark rays of the earth

Description of the catastrophe:

Now Icarus falls down head first the last frame of him is a glimpse of a heal childlike small being swallowed by the devouring sea Up above the father cries out the name which no longer belongs to a neck or a head but only to a remembrance Commentary: He was so young did not understand that wings are just a metaphor a bit of wax and feathers and a contempt for the laws of gravitation I cannot hold a body at an elevation of a great many feet The essence of the matter is in having our hearts which are coursed by heavy blood fill with air and this very thing Icarus did not want to accept let us pray

Zbiegniew Herbert --- Daedalus and Icarus

Icarus Rubens

Icarus and Daedalus c. 1869 Oil on Canvas Frederic Leighton, 1st Baron Leighton (1830–1896) Private Collection

Icarus Chagall

Icarus Henri Matisse

Icarus Series Study No. 1 Bronze Al Farrow

The Icarus Girl A Novel

by Helen Oyeyemi

Icarus

Abstract

Theo Beijaard