Landscape With Icarus

Pieter the Elder’s Baroque painting “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus,” was supposed to focus on Icarus drowning in the ocean after being near the sun for too long. Instead, the focus was shifted towards the landscape where the two farmers are working in the field. The reason why this occurred was because the mass of the painting made it so to distract me from searching where Icarus was in the painting. The landscape based on its mass carried more weight in the painting than the ocean as it showed more figures that are peaking at you such as the famers, animals, woodland, and the cliffy terrain. The cliffy terrain at the highest peak showed the most three dimensional form by creating more detail within the lines causing curvilinear organic
shapes to swerve to the left side of the painting since the farmer in the red shirt was plowing in the ground when using his horse to steer in different directions. The woodland also caused this weight shift by the artist being decorative in painting different types of plants located mainly on the left side plus a few small plants around the red shirt farmer and his horse, while little shrubs of plants were behind the blue shirt farmer, his dog, and a few sheep.
While the landscape shows more mass, the ocean plus a few other parts among it such as the rest of the landscape, a few rocks, and the small town that surrounds it shows the least mass since the haziness and less detailing make the scenery more atmospheric in the distance towards the horizon line.
Even though this is a Baroque painting, most of the shapes in the artwork are organic since you see more angular curves within the figures in the foreground and background. It was rather funny that the artist would make the sheep a little bit chunkier while they turn their backs just eating. As for the lighting inside the piece, the sun is located upon the vanishing point in the background. However, the sun is not a huge bright sun, but rather a little sun. I mostly see light occurring in the sky – particularly the brightest colors which are above the sun hitting the ocean floor causing it to be the main highlight. The other parts that showed many varieties of highlights and shadows were the plowed lines on the landscape and the boat located at the right side of the piece. The plants also showed aspects of light because of the different value of colors. As for Icarus, I had to squint my eyes a little bit to see where he was. He ended up being in the near right corner of the ocean where the boat is showing his little legs while a few feathers
followed.