Shop art print and framed art Landscape with the Fall of Icarus by Pieter Brueghel the Elder

The Fall of Icarus is a painting by Pieter Brueghel the Elder whose original has disappeared but of which there are two copies on display in Brussels, one in the collection of the van Buuren Museum and the other in that of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium. Experts and critics have long been divided over the authenticity of the work on display at the OldMasters Museum, formerly the Royal Museum of Ancient Art in Brussels. The two known versions of the painting (one painted on canvas and the other on panel) are listed under the same title, without a signature or date. Dendrochronology dates the work on panel to 1583 (van Buuren copy). A comparative study of the works by Pieter Brueghel the Elder and these identical copies made by his eldest son, Pieter Brueghel the Younger, reveals that the canvas version must date from around 1600, some thirty years after Bruegel's death. Stylistic analysis of the drawing (which can be studied using infrared reflectography) shows that it is a copy, probably of an earlier painting that has been lost, "This attribution is nonetheless controversial because it is based on unverified hypotheses and incomplete data." The controversy surrounding the work's authenticity is not new. As early as 1912, when The Fall of Icarus was acquired by the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, its authenticity was disputed by certain connoisseurs, mainly for two reasons: for its inferior pictorial qualities, due to the heavy overpainting, but above all [...]

 

This artwork is a painting from the renaissance period. It belongs to the flemish & northern renaissance style.

 

« Landscape with the Fall of Icarus » is kept at Musees Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels, Belgium.

 

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