| Artist | Pieter Bruegel the Elder |
|---|---|
| Year | c. 1563 |
| Type | oil on panel |
| Dimensions | 114 cm × 155 cm (45 in × 61 in) |
| Location | Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna |
| Artist | Pieter Bruegel the Elder |
|---|---|
| Year | c. 1563 |
| Type | oil on panel |
| Dimensions | 60 cm × 74.5 cm (24 in × 29.3 in) |
| Location | Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam |
The Tower of Babel is the subject of three oil paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The first, a miniature painted on ivory, was painted while Bruegel was in Rome and is now lost.[1] The two surviving paintings depict the construction of the Tower of Babel, which according to the Book of Genesis in the Bible, was a tower built by a unified, monolingual humanity as a mark of their achievement and to prevent them from scattering: "Then they said, 'Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.'" (Genesis 11:4). The person in the foreground is likely Nimrod, who was said to have ordered the construction of the Tower.[2]
Bruegel's depiction of the architecture of the tower, with its numerous arches and other examples of Roman engineering, is deliberately reminiscent of the Roman Colosseum,[3] which Christians of the time saw as both a symbol of hubris and persecution. Bruegel had visited Rome in 1552-1553.[2] The Tower was also symbolic of the turmoil between the Catholic church (which at the time did services only in Latin) and the polyglot Lutheran Protestant religion of the Netherlands.[4] Although at first glance the tower appears to be a stable series of concentric pillars, upon closer examination it is apparent that none of the layers lie at a true horizontal. Rather the tower is built as an ascending spiral.
The workers in the painting have built the arches perpendicular to the slanted ground, thereby making them unstable and a few arches can already be seen crumbling. The foundation and bottom layers of the tower had not been completed before the higher layers were constructed. Lucas van Valckenborch, a contemporary of Bruegel's, also painted the Tower of Babel in the 1560s and later in his career, possibly after seeing Bruegel's depiction.[2] Both were part of a larger tradition of painting the tower during the 1500s and 1600s.[5] The influence of Northern artists can be seen in the careful attention Bruegel paid to the painting of the landscape. The Tower of Babel is on display at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Another painting of the same subject The "Little" Tower of Babel, c. 1563, is in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam.