Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

Landscape is uncommon in de Gheyn’s oeuvre, making his cycle of six landscape engravings quite exceptional. Each of these small stylized landscapes contain a narrative element, such as the mythological story about Icarus’s fall. The compositional arrangement follows the Flemish tradition of fictional landscapes. Another print from the series - the landscape with gypsies (R 48886) - is more innovative in its composition as it captures the common appearance of an early 17th-century village while the genre motif is less prominent. The subject matter along with the linear, stylized execution prefigure the famous etchings by Jacques Callot.The tendency to abandon stylization for depictions of actual landscapes and the everyday life in them corresponds with the general development in art in the Low Countries around 1600 and ushers in the Golden Age Dutch Art in the 17th-century.