3-057-443 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

The fall of Icarus, 1573. Icarus has flown too near to the sun, the heat of which has destroyed his feather wings. He is plunging into the sea. It is an illustration to the poem 'In Astrologos' which is found in "Emblemata Liber" (The Book of Emblems). Opposite this is the autograph of the astronomer Johannes Kepler. Typically, an emblem book would comprise pages of a title, a picture, and a short poem that explained the allegorical meaning of the image named in the title and shown in the picture.