Reading Art: The Benefits of Looking More Closely

Discovering art’s secrets by paying closer attention

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (c. 1560) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels. Source WikiArt

The pleasures of art are numerous. One of the simplest and best is when you notice something in a work of art that you hadn’t seen before — especially when that detail seems to unlock a vital clue to the artwork’s meaning.