Continue your adventure
Explore ancient Mayan sites
Play on the app
Take photos with Art Transfer, find your Art Selfie, and more
Today's top picks
Choose your fighter
See ancient animals in Augmented Reality
Explore natural history museums
Recommended for you
Discover popular artworks and hidden gems from around the world
Discover the world with...
Pick a topic and follow it around the world
Go beyond the guidebook
Visit surprising cultural sites from around the world
Explore Pocket Galleries
Step inside a gallery from home
Making a splash
Icarus and his father, Daedalus, learnt how to fly with wings made of feathers and wax, but Icarus flew too close to the sun and melted the wax. Here, he crashes into the sea as the world goes on around him.
Ploughing ahead
Bruegel's design puts an ordinary farmer in the foreground, leaving the 'epic' myth of Icarus to happen in the background. Life goes on, and the indifference is both funny and tragic.
Sail away
Bruegel foregrounds ordinary life, and relegates these grand ships to the background, in a technique known as 'Mannerist inversion'
Sheeping around
Several sheep can be seen wandering around the coastal edge. Do you think any of them fell into the water like Icarus?
Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, Bruegel the Elder
Click on the dots to zoom into the details
Explore