bruegel icarus science copy

Some scientific discoveries
are better not being madeJackie Wullschlager begins her review
of Heaven on Earth by TJ Clark with a
familiar quotation from WH Auden
and reference to Bruegel’s glorious
picture of the fall of Icarus (“Paradise
lost”, Life & Arts, October 27). She
clearly hasn’t yet made her way to the
stupendous, once-in-a-lifetime
exhibition of Pieter Bruegel the Elder
in Vienna, at the Kunsthistorisches
Museum, because, if she had, like me
she would surely have been astonished
by the absence from the exhibition of
the said painting — and then dismayed
to discover that it is no longer
considered to be a Bruegel work.
Forensic art scholarship has
determined that the picture may be
based on an original by Bruegel, but
“Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” is
by a copyist and not his work. Some
scientific discoveries are better not
made: the absence of this picture —
indelibly seared in my mind, thanks to
Auden, and in the minds of many of my
generation, I’m sure, as a quintessential
product of the fevered genius of the
great Flemish master — is about the
only blemish in this otherwise faultless
and extraordinary show.Christopher EnglishHarare, Zimbabwe