Icarus

Hendrik Goltzius, after Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem

National Gallery of Art

This is a print of a muscular, nude man falling from the sky. His body is mostly horizontal, with his feet toward us and one leg raised, showing us his feet, groin, and legs, and most of his torso and arms. The man has a powerful, muscular chest and limbs. One of his hands is raised to his head, which is visible in profile looking upward and to the right. His hair floats in the air above his scalp. In the distance, at the bottom of the print, a winged man is visible, with a long beard. He looks upward toward the falling man, one of his arms upraised. In the top left, the sun shines brightly, light radiating outward. The scene is enclosed within a circular border with Latin inscriptions. Below, the background reveals a faintly drawn landscape with a wide body of water interrupted by three large mountains, all covered with buildings.