Landscape With the Fall of Icarus By Pieter Bruegel

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus is a famous painting by Pieter Bruegel which depicts a small harbour scene in the background, with a man on a donkey in the foreground. It was unusual for Bruegel to compose a painting in this way and as such there has been considerable controversy over whether in fact, Bruegel was indeed the creator of the original. There have been no other reasonable ideas on who else may have painted this work, so it remains loosely ranked under the career of Bruegel.
This article covers the Landscape with the Fall of Icarus painting in full and also discusses the Bruegel family who produced many impressive artists besides just Pieter the Elder. The title of this work relates to a mythological tale that helped inspire the artist to create a full oil painting with features from the original mythological story. Such topics have long since provided inspiration to a variety of artists in different media, most commonly painters.
The Bruegel dynasty of painters included Jan the Younger and Elder, Pieter the Younger plus Pieter the Elder who himself is believed to have created Landscape with the Fall of Icarus and also is believed by most to be the true spearhead of the entire family's success within the art world which lasted several generations and is still well documented today. Pieter the Younger is known to have copied his father's style in order to achieve fame without the same necessary creative or technical talents that his father possessed. Having said that, some of the Younger's works were still impressive in their own right.
Pieter Bruegel's normal style was to incorporate large numbers of small figures into massive rolling landscape paintings though Landscape with the Fall of Icarus clearly takes a different approach, with a much clearer focus on one particular character that seems almost over enlarged and comfortably takes precedence over all other items of this painting.

The easy conclusion to draw is that Landscape with the Fall of Icarus will likely remain a controversial but popular painting with many still unsure as to who it should really be attributed to. Most place it within Bruegel's career and simply believe that it just happens to be slightly different in style to most of his other notable works. The balance between the foreground characters and sweeping background landscape, which includes some charming ships making their way from the harbour, is perhaps the secret of this painting's success.