Click image for a bigger landscape.

Here Maestro Bruegel shows his great sense of drama as well as humor. Icarus and his death are a sidestory. A guy falling into the sea - so what? Bruegel condemns the young man to a tiny side story. Even the peasants in the image hardly take natice of what is happening.

Here is a excerpt from the wikipedia entry about this painting that explains the attitude behind this:

There is also a Flemish proverb (of the sort imaged in other works by Bruegel):"No plough stands still because a man dies". The painting may, as Auden’s poem suggests, depict humankind’s indifference to suffering by highlighting the ordinary events which continue to occur, despite the unobserved death of the mythic figure Icarus, who is seen drowning in the bottom right area of the sea. In Greek mythology, Icarus was the son of Daedalus, famous for his death by falling into the sea when he flew too close to the sun, melting the wax holding his artificial wings together. The sun, already half-set on the horizon, is a long way away; the flight did not reach anywhere near it.

Life is each human’s own tragedy!

Part of the Art Motive Series: "The Story of Daedalus and Icarus"