Armed Three-Master with Daedalus and Icarus in the Sky

Frans Huys after Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Engraving; first state of three

Metropolitan Museum of Art

This engraving depicts a heavily armed three-masted sailing vessel navigating open waters, while above it the mythological figures of Daedalus and Icarus are shown in flight, referencing the ancient Greek myth of hubris and downfall. The composition belongs to the celebrated series known as The Sailing Vessels, a suite of prints executed by the Netherlandish engraver Frans Huys after original designs by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, and published by Hieronymus Cock in Antwerp. Bruegel, one of the foremost figures of the Northern Renaissance, was renowned for his landscapes and scenes of peasant life, but in this series he turned his meticulous eye to the ships and maritime world that defined the commercial power of 16th-century Antwerp. In keeping with Bruegel's characteristic approach to the Icarus myth—paralleled in his celebrated painted landscape—the tragic fall is rendered as a minor detail against the indifferent grandeur of sea and vessel, suggesting the world's obliviousness to individual catastrophe.