ela-2017:RL.9-10.7
ela-2017:RL.9-10.7 Analyze the representation of a subject or a key scene in two different artistic mediums, including what is emphasized or absent in each treatment (e.g., Auden's "Musée des Beaux Arts" and Breughel's Landscape with the Fall of Icarus).
Learning goal: Analyze the representation of a subject or a key scene in two different artistic mediums, including what is emphasized or absent in each treatment. The lesson uses the fall of Icarus as told in Ovid's Metamorphoses (a narrative poem, read here in a public-domain prose translation) and as painted in Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, an oil painting long attributed to Pieter Bruegel the Elder, in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels, then applies the same method to an original poem and a hypothetical film scene.
What "artistic medium" means and why it matters. A medium is the material and form through which a work is made: a narrative poem, a painting, a stage production, a film, a sculpture, a graphic novel. Each medium has tools that come more readily to it than to the others. A narrative can move through time, give characters speech, and tell us what they feel. A painting usually shows a single moment all at once (some paintings place several moments of a story in one scene), and it controls attention through size, placement, color, light and what occupies the foreground. A stage production adds bodies, voices, and the audience's shared space; film adds the camera's choice of shot and edit. Analyzing a subject across mediums means asking what each treatment makes large and what it makes small or leaves out, and then what those choices mean.
The subject in Ovid. In Ovid's story, Daedalus builds wings of feathers and wax so he and his son Icarus can escape the island of Crete, and he warns the boy to fly a middle course between the sea and the sun. Ovid dwells on the father: his cheeks "wet," his hands trembling as he fits the wings, his kisses "never again to be repeated." He includes three onlookers. In Henry T. Riley's translation: "A person while he is angling for fish with his quivering rod, or the shepherd leaning on his crook, or the ploughman on the plough tail, when he beholds them, is astonished, and believes them to be Divinities, who thus can cleave the air." Then Icarus, "pleased with a bolder flight," climbs toward the sun, the wax softens, he falls calling his father's name, and the grieving Daedalus cries out "Icarus, where art thou?" and buries him. Emphasized: the father's love and fear, the warning, the thrill of flight, the grief. The onlookers are astonished witnesses of the flight: Ovid mentions them before the fall and does not say that they see it.
The subject in the painting. The Brussels canvas was long attributed to Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The museum now places it among works of contested authorship and suggests it is a faithful copy of a lost original, and technical studies have not fixed its date (the museum gives a range from 1555 to 1635); who painted this canvas is still debated. Look at what it makes large. The foreground is dominated by a plowman walking behind his horse, cutting furrows. Beyond him, to the right, a shepherd stands with his flock, gazing up into the sky, not toward the fall. At the water's edge an angler bends to his line. A tall sailing ship crosses the bay. And Icarus? Only his legs, small, kicking in the water near the ship, easy to miss. Daedalus does not appear in this version at all. The sun sits low on the horizon, far from where any boy could have reached it.
What each treatment emphasizes and leaves absent. The two treatments select different moments. Ovid's onlookers appear during the flight and are astonished at the two fliers; he does not say whether they see the fall. The painting shows the fall itself, and its three figures do not look at Icarus at all. So the painting keeps Ovid's three figures but changes their part: the people who marvel at the flight become, at the later moment the painting selects, people who do not attend to the drowning. What is absent in the painting is almost everything Ovid emphasizes: the father, the warning, the flight, the cry. What is emphasized is what Ovid mentions only in passing: ordinary work in a vast landscape. That difference changes the meaning. Ovid's version is about a father and son, ambition and grief. The painting suggests that suffering and spectacle happen at the edges of other people's working days, and that the world goes on. Neither is simply "right"; each uses its medium to make a different subject central.
The misconception: "the painting just shows the story." A second treatment is not a neutral copy. Even a faithful adaptation must choose what to show, from what angle and at what scale, and every choice includes and excludes. When you compare, do not stop at listing differences ("the painting has a ship"); explain what the difference makes a viewer notice, feel or conclude.
A method in four questions. (1) What moment or aspect of the subject does each treatment select? (2) What does each make large, central, bright or lasting, and what small, marginal or absent? (3) Which tools of the medium create that emphasis (placement and scale in painting; narration, speech and time in text; staging and lighting in theater; framing and editing in film)? (4) What does each treatment's emphasis suggest about the subject?
Original poem — The Plowman Explains
Written for this lesson, in the voice of the plowman in the painting described above.
(1) Something fell. I heard it, I suppose,
(2) the way you hear a gull hit water, or a fish,
(3) the way you hear the ship's men shouting,
(4) which they always are. The horse did not look up.
(5) The furrow wants a straight hand to the end,
(6) and the end was far, and the light was going.
(7) You people who come later with your frames
(8) and your long stories always ask me why.
(9) Here is why: a field is not a story.
(10) It does not stop because a boy has wings.
(11) By supper I had turned the whole hillside.
(12) Nobody ever paints the whole hillside.
Reading the poem against the painting. The original poem above is a third treatment. It gives the plowman a voice, which this painting does not, and lets him answer the viewer's question: he heard "something" but "the furrow wants a straight hand to the end." Its last line turns the painting's emphasis back on itself: "Nobody ever paints the whole hillside." The poem emphasizes the worker's reasons and claims that even the painting leaves his labor partial.
Worked example 1 (Ovid versus painting on the onlookers): Ovid: each of the three onlookers "believes them to be Divinities," so the onlookers are astonished, and what astonishes them is the flight ("when he beholds them" refers to father and son in the air); Ovid does not say that they see the fall. Painting: at the moment of the fall, the plowman looks down at his furrow, the shepherd gazes up but away from the fall, the angler attends to his line. Analysis: the painting borrows Ovid's figures but places them at a later moment and gives them a different response, wonder at the flight in Ovid, inattention to the drowning in the painting; by making them large and the fall tiny, it shifts the subject from the tragedy to the apparent indifference of the ordinary world. Because the moments differ, this is a contrast between two treatments, not between two reactions to the same event. Tool of the medium: scale and placement (foreground figures versus small legs in the water).
Worked example 2 (what is absent and why it matters): Absent from the painting: Daedalus (in this version), the moment of melting, Icarus's face, any grief. Absent from Ovid's account: the landscape's everyday detail, the ship, the weight of routine work. Each absence directs attention. Removing the father removes the emotional center Ovid builds with trembling hands and tears; a viewer is left with a question Ovid's account does not raise: who noticed the fall? A strong analysis links each absence to the meaning it creates.
Worked example 3 (a key scene in two hypothetical mediums): Scene: section 4 of The Line at Halloran's Orchard, when Tessa tells Mr. Halloran the result. Hypothetical film: the camera stays in close-up on Mr. Halloran's hand on the trunk while Tessa speaks off-screen, then cuts to a wide shot of the whole row as he says "The trees don't know where the line is." Hypothetical graphic-novel page: six panels, the largest showing the empty basket passing from his hand to hers; no panel shows his face when he hears "fourteen feet." Analysis: the film emphasizes his grief (close-up on touch) and the scale of loss (wide shot); the graphic novel emphasizes the gift and leaves his reaction absent, inviting the reader to imagine it. Both are faithful to the words, yet they make different moments central.
Emphasis grid (representation task): First view a full-size reproduction of the painting (the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium story in the references reproduces the painting; zoom in on the lower right). Check each detail of the lesson's description against the image, and note at least two visual details the description leaves out. Then make a three-column grid for Ovid's account, the painting (from your own viewing) and the original poem. Rows: moment selected; what is large or central; what is small or absent; tools of the medium used; resulting meaning. Fill each cell with a phrase and, for the texts, a short quotation.
Independent performance: Choose a subject or key scene represented in two different artistic mediums: for example, a scene from a play you have read and a staged or filmed production of it, a poem and a painting it responds to, or a myth and a sculpture. (If you do not have access to another pairing, use Ovid's account and a reproduction of the painting that you view yourself; the lesson's written description is a support, not a substitute, and your visual evidence must come from the image.) Write a 600-800-word analysis. Success criteria: (1) identify each medium and the tools it offers; (2) analyze at least three things emphasized in each treatment and at least two things absent from each; (3) explain how each emphasis or absence shapes meaning, not just that it differs; (4) quote the text at least three times and describe visual or staged details precisely (position, scale, lighting, framing); (5) conclude with what the pairing reveals that neither treatment reveals alone.
Design extension: Sketch or describe a storyboard of four frames representing the fall of Icarus in a new medium (comic, stage, short film). Beside each frame, note what you chose to emphasize and what you chose to leave absent.
An adult may read the prompts aloud. Answer independently with words, objects, drawings or a demonstration before opening the answer guide. Award 1 point for a correct result or claim and 1 point for a matching explanation or demonstration; where a question asks only for a result (a corrected sentence, a spelling, a count), a fully correct result earns both points, and the answer guide shows what a complete response contains. Record prompting separately. The total (two points per question) is local practice feedback, not an Ohio proficiency level.
What does Ovid emphasize in his account of Icarus that the painting leaves absent? Give two examples with evidence.
Ovid emphasizes the father's love and fear, "the cheeks of the old man were wet, and the hands of the father trembled," and the grief after the fall, when Daedalus cries "Icarus, where art thou?" The painting leaves both absent: Daedalus does not appear in this version, and no figure shows grief. Removing them removes the story's emotional center.
How does the painting use the tools of its medium to change the role of Ovid's three onlookers?
It uses scale and placement: the plowman is the largest figure, in the foreground; the shepherd stands clearly visible and the angler sits at the water's edge; Icarus is reduced to small legs in the water. Ovid's onlookers are "astonished" at the flight; the painting, which shows the later moment of the fall, has its figures look at the furrow, away into the sky, or at the fishing line. The medium's control of what is large and central turns Ovid's marveling onlookers into people who do not attend to the drowning.
Explain one meaning the painting's treatment suggests that Ovid's does not.
By placing ordinary labor in the foreground and the fall at the margin, the painting suggests that suffering or spectacle often happens unnoticed at the edges of other people's working lives, and that the world continues. Ovid's account, centered on father and son, is about ambition, warning and grief, and treats the onlookers as amazed witnesses of the flight rather than as people indifferent to the fall.
A student writes: "The painting is just an illustration of Ovid's story." Explain why this is inaccurate.
Calling it "just an illustration" overlooks its independent interpretive choices: it does not follow Ovid's emphases but inverts them. It omits the father, shrinks the fall, and enlarges figures Ovid mentions in one sentence. Every treatment must choose what to show, from what angle and at what scale, and these choices here produce a different subject: the world's indifference rather than a family's tragedy.
In the original poem "The Plowman Explains," what does the poem make explicit that the painting leaves unstated, and how does the last line comment on the painting?
The poem gives the plowman a voice and reasons, "The furrow wants a straight hand to the end, / and the end was far, and the light was going," which this painting leaves unstated. (A painting can suggest a motive through what it shows, and some paintings include written words; this one gives the plowman none, so his reasons are left to the viewer.) The last line, "Nobody ever paints the whole hillside," points out that even the painting, which enlarges him, shows only part of his work, so the poem claims his labor is still partly absent.
Describe how a hypothetical film version of section 4 of The Line at Halloran's Orchard might emphasize something the printed story leaves implicit.
A close-up of Mr. Halloran's hand resting on the trunk while Tessa speaks off-screen would emphasize his attachment and grief, which the text shows only through the brief detail "stood with one hand on the trunk." A cut to a wide shot of the whole row on "The trees don't know where the line is" would make the scale of the loss visible. The film's framing turns an implicit feeling into a central image.
Why must a strong comparison discuss what is absent as well as what is emphasized?
Every treatment selects, so absence is a choice that directs attention just as emphasis does. Noticing that the painting omits Daedalus explains why it feels unconcerned with grief; noticing that Ovid barely describes the landscape explains why his onlookers seem minor. Discussing only what is present misses half of how each medium shapes meaning.