Auden’s poem was inspired by the poet looking at paintings in a museum gallery by the Old Masters (the great artists of the Renaissance who depicted scenes, for example, from Christ’s life and early Christendom.) In the first thirteen lines, consider what is happening in the paintings he is viewing. What is going on around the ‘miraculous birth’ and the ‘dreadful martyrdom’?

Auden is particularly struck by Breughel’s The Fall of Icarus. The painting captures the moment when, having flown too close to the sun on wings held together by wax, Icarus plunges into the sea. We might think that this disaster would be the focal point of the painting, but it clearly isn’t. What view of life and death is conveyed as we see the painting through Auden’s eyes?

The tone of the poem appears almost nonchalant in places