Chapter 5 | ICARUS AND LUCIFER
Perhaps the most famous story of a man with wings is the story of Icarus from Greek mythology. Icarus wanted to escape with self-made wings from an island where he was imprisoned together with his father. Despite his father’s warnings he flew too close to the sun. The glue between the feathers melted and he fell into the sea. In this stone relief we see Icarus already falling. His startled face and a few loose feathers clearly show that he is falling. Furthermore the artist Artus Quellinus did not sculpt the body exactly upright or horizontally. His legs and arms are not balanced and cannot hold on to anything. Placed right above the door to the bankruptcy room in the 17th century city hall of Amsterdam, Icarus was used clearly as a symbol for the consequences of overconfidence and reckless management.
In the example of a match with bat wings you can see again how an oblique position (right) gives much more of the impression of falling or diving.
The Fall of Lucifer
The (Latin) name Lucifer comes from a myth in which the person Lucifer is the light bringer/dawn/morning star. Another myth is ‘The fall of Lucifer’. Lucifer was a beautiful angel who became jealous of the fact that God paid a lot of attention to man (Adam and Eve). He started a rebellion against God. As punishment for this, God cast him out of heaven. It made Lucifer so vengeful that he turned into the devil. In the beautiful engraving/illustration by Gustave Doré you get an impression of Lucifer’s immense fall from heaven to earth and ultimately to his new home, hell. In the engraving Lucifer has already been given ‘devilish’ bat wings instead of the usual white feather wings of angels.
EXTRA: Choose a moment from the story of Icarus or Lucifer to draw. It’s up to you what kind of wings you give them.
A pupil from group 6 of primary school found the story about Lucifer exciting and wanted to make a drawing of it. In a long vertical strip he has depicted different moments of the fall one below the other. Lucifer falls through several layers of clouds until he ends up in a walled hell where fire burns and the skull of a person is intended to give us the shrivers.
