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# Long description

Brueghel’s painting centres on a ploughman – the dominant figure in the landscape. He guides a horse-drawn plough that cuts a striking pattern of furrows across a tiny, undulating field in the foreground. Strong low light from the setting sun on the horizon casts crisp shadows of the ridges of soil turned by the plough, and less precise shadows are cast by the ploughman, the plough and the horse. A thin hedge straggles along the further edge of the field, separating it from an area of rough pasture grazed by a flock of sheep, tended by a shepherd who leans on his stick with his dog sitting quietly beside him. Both ploughman and shepherd face towards the left of the picture, the former concentrating on his task, the latter gazing upwards. Beyond the pasture and a small clump of trees, the land drops steeply down to the sea that occupies the central area of the painting. To the left of the sheep, more trees, in spring leaf, frame the image. Just left of the trunk of the tallest tree, its trunk rising above the horse’s harness, is what appears to be a human skull, largely hidden in the shadowed undergrowth. In the lower right-hand corner a fisherman sits on a rock, gazing downwards into the water; beside him, a partridge perches on the branch of a bush. Immediately above the fisherman, disappearing into the green waves of the sea, are two slim legs – the left leg kicking upwards, the right already submerged in the foam. Beyond the drowning Icarus a finely delineated sailing ship heads away from the scene. A rocky coastline fades into the distance: a few islands are visible in the green sea: a sizeable town with a harbour lies in the distance to the left, and another, smaller town, appears on a headland on the right. Two or three smaller ships sail into the distance. Nobody seems to notice the drowning Icarus, unless maybe the tiny figure climbing the rigging of the nearby ship. There is no attempt to create an image of the ancient world: the ships, the dress of the human figures and the tools they use are contemporary with Brueghel, late sixteenth century.