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The Tower of Babel

Pieter Bruegel the Elder · Renaissance & Mannerism

Artist: Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525–1569)
Date: 1563
Dimensions: 114 x 155 cm
Medium: Oil on oak panel
Location: Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria

The Tower of Babel depicts the biblical story in which humanity, speaking a single language, tries to build a tower reaching heaven. God punishes their pride by confusing their speech so that they can no longer understand one another, and the building is abandoned.

A closer look

Bruegel imagines the tower as a colossal, spiralling structure rising from a rocky outcrop beside a busy harbour city. Its arches and galleries recall the Colosseum in Rome, which he had seen on his travels. Hundreds of tiny workers swarm over scaffolding, cranes and ramps, and ships unload materials at the quay. Yet the structure is already flawed: its storeys are not level and the lower parts are crumbling while the top is still unfinished. In the foreground King Nimrod inspects the work as stonemasons kneel before him.

History of the painting

The picture belonged to Nicolaes Jonghelinck, a wealthy Antwerp merchant who owned no fewer than sixteen paintings by Bruegel. Around 1600 it was in the collection of Emperor Rudolf II in Prague, a great admirer of the painter, and later in that of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, whose paintings formed the core of the imperial gallery in Vienna, today’s Kunsthistorisches Museum.

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