Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Fall of Icarus

This poem, written by Auden in 1938, aptly captures the mood of this work and others (such as The Procession to the Calvary, reproduced and discussed here).

The old-fashioned way of overcoming earth's gravity:

True Flight: the Bird over the Ship and City

A good Wikipedia article on The Fall of Icarus:

Another version by Canadian artist René Milot:

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