The Astonishing Detail of this Famous Flemish Masterpiece
The painting that captures an impossible architectural vision
This superb painting, The Tower of Babel, was made by the Dutch master Pieter Bruegel the Elder in 1563.
Squeezed onto a strip of land between a town and the banks of a riverway, a tower is growing into the sky.
The image seems to heave at the edges, telling us that the construction has swollen to ungainly and improper proportions thanks to the ambitions of those building it.
Bruegel was an artist who took great pleasure in revealing humankind’s flaws, foibles and contradictions. And there is no doubt that this is one of his greatest works.
Let’s see what the painting reveals…
Poking through the clouds
The Tower of Babel stands as an emblem of the prideful ambitions of mankind and is said to explain why the world has so many different languages. For when God saw men working on their tower with its advancement towards heaven, he rendered their speech unintelligible among different nations, making them unable to contrive and collaborate with one another.
The story is told in the Book of Genesis 11:3–9:
“They said to each other…
