Pieter Bruegel the Elder - The Tower of Babel [1563]

Pieter Bruegel the Elder - The Tower of Babel [1563], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Bruegel’s monumental composition had several forerunners in Netherlandish painting, but his work became the most famous classic among the Tower of Babel depictions and was frequently copied in many different variations. The sense of scale is provided by the flemish-style port city, which is impressively tiny in comparison to the tower. With meticulous precision and encyclopaedic interest Bruegel depicts an abundance of technical and mechanical details, from the supply of the building materials in the busy harbour to the various cranes and the scaffolding on the unfinished brick foundation. He sets the workers’ dwellings into the stone outer structure, which blends elements of classical with Romanesque architecture, and they appear to be more than merely temporary. By anchoring the building on the rocky slope, Bruegel creates the impression of static equilibrium. Reaching up to the clouds, the building, however, is optically distorted and appears to have slightly sunk into the ground on the left side. This is an artistic gesture, on the one hand enhancing the impression of the building’s monumentality, and on the other hand alluding to human hubris and the impossibility of completing the tower because “the Lord confused the language of all the earth.”

[Kunsthistorishes Museum, Vienna - Oil on wood, 155 x 114 cm]