Willem van Nieulandt II

(Antwerp 1584–1635 Amsterdam)
The Fall of Icarus,
oil on panel, 49 x 71 cm, framed
We are grateful to Luuk Pijl for confirming the attribution to Willem van Nieulandt the Younger on the basis of a photograph. A copy of the certificate is not available. Pijl dates the work to 1610, when the master was active in Amsterdam.

The present panel, with its bucolic idyll of lounging shepherds on the left and a contented angler in the foreground, disturbed by Icarus tumbling from the horizon towards a classical city, shows the debt the Willem van Nieulandt the Younger owed to both the originator of this type of pictorial narrative, Pieter Brueghel the Elder, and van Nieulandt’s tutor, Paul Bril. The shadow cast by the foliage upon the structure to the left cleverly emphasises the light of the emerging sun, while Icarus, tumbling is subtly modelled in greys against the carefully modulated blues and whites of the sky.
Specialist: Damian Brenninkmeyer