Daedalus attaching Icarus' wings

Considered a 'fine early work of around 1635' by Spike (loc. cit.), this picture was executed during Preti's first years in Rome. He travelled there as a young man from Calabria to join his brother, Gregorio (also a painter), arriving around 1630. He is first documented at the Accademia di San Luca in 1633 and in 1636 he is recorded as sharing a room with his brother in San Biagio a Montecitorio. Given the pervading influence of Caravaggio and Ribera on his early work, it is often assumed that he studied briefly in Naples on his way to Rome.

Preti's choice of subject was also no doubt indebted to Caravaggio and his followers for it was only in the 1630s, whilst under his influence, that he took on secular subject matter with any regularity. The story is told by Ovid, who relates that Icarus and his father, the Athenian craftsman Daedalus, constructed wings to enable them to fly off the island of Crete where they were imprisoned. Icarus's subsequent death as a result of flying too near the sun was used by moralists and artists to warn against the danger of excess and teach the virtue of moderation. This moralising theme is not lost in Preti's treatment of the subject in which the cautious, paternal figure of Daedalus is contrasted with his confident and impatient son, cheerfully unaware of his impending doom.