"Son of the inventor Daedalus, architect of the famous labyrinth for the Minotaur on the island of Crete, he was locked in the labyrinth with his father. This gave rise to the idea of building wings to escape. Despite his father's warnings not to fly too high, Icarus approached the sun, whose heat melted the wax, causing him to fall into the sea."
Date: 1854
Material: marble
Location: Historical Museum of Miramare Castle (Trieste)
Inscriptions: IN.ZO FRACCAROLI 1854
Daedalus Attaching the Wings to Icarus is a famous sculptural group created by Innocenzo Fraccaroli. Conceived during his years of study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice (1824-1829), the plaster model was submitted to the prestigious Brera competition in 1829, winning first prize. This recognition marked a turning point in Fraccaroli's career: the Milanese prize offered him the opportunity to further his studies in Rome from 1830 to 1835, in a city then consecrated as an international center of culture and a favored destination for artists from all over Europe.
The sculptor draws on the mythological episode narrated by Ovid in the Metamorphoses, the moment in which Daedalus attaches feathered wings to his son Icarus in order to attempt to escape from Minos's labyrinth on the island of Crete through the sky, unable to escape by sea. The story of Daedalus and Icarus symbolically addresses the never-to-be-completed theme of human flight: an aspiration that has fascinated scientists and inventors since the time of Leonardo da Vinci. Among the various known replicas of this work, one is preserved at Miramare Castle: made of marble in 1854 and exhibited in Paris the following year, it was purchased three years later by the Archduke of Austria Maximilian of Habsburg for his own residence.
