"Musee des Beaux Arts" by W.H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

Crash and Burn, Part 1

Here are two paintings, both done in the mid 1500s and both with the same title: “Landscape and the Fall of Icarus.” The one by Hans Bol (Flemish) shows Icarus to be the clear focal point of the piece, while the one by Pieter Brueghel the Elder (Dutch) is much more compelling to me because it speaks an entirely different message. You really have to hunt Waldo style to find him in this one, and his untimely end feels rather more inglorious. Raises some fun discussion prospects!

Hans Bol, Flemish, 1534-1593

Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Dutch 1520-1569