Fall of Icarus

Sculptor Francesco Bertos was active primarily in the Venetian Republic during the early eighteenth century, and was patronized by important collectors of the time, including Peter the Great of Russia.

His small-scale sculptural groups, like the AMAM example, recall the twisted, elongated forms of his sixteenth-century predecessor Giambologna in their weightlessness, displaying compositions that often require the viewer to move around them in order to fully appreciate their complexity. As art historian Charles Avery has noted, Bertos's skill in working marble led to a charge by the Inquisition in the 1730s that his sculptures were so elaborate that he must have been assisted by the devil; it seemed impossible that anyone could create such gravity defying figures.

This dynamic, spiral, and pyramidal composition depicts Icarus, who had wings affixed to his back with wax in an attempt to escape Crete with his father, Daedalus. The sun melted the wax and Icarus tumbled to the earth. The figure on the ground is likely a river god, given the urn of water flowing at his side, symbolic of the sea into which Icarus fell; a feather has fallen onto his head. The piece as a whole may represent Fire and Water, as a set of two other known works-showing the Fall of Icarus, and Proserpine and Pluto-is thought to symbolize Fire and Water, Air and Earth.

The AMAM collection is rich in small bronzes from the Renaissance and Baroque, including two versions of Giambologna's Mercury, and this magnificent sculpture by Bertos continues this tradition into the eighteenth century.