Tower of Babel – Pieter Bruegel

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, c. 1563
Oil on panel, 114 cm × 155 cm (45 in × 61 in)

The story of the Tower of Babel is a myth “explaining” the break-up of one language into many—and being a Biblical myth it involves a tale of man’s hubris, and the god’s great ego.

Men, you see—early men, still united “as one”--felt so good about themselves and what they could do, and had heard so much about the wonders of Heaven, that they began building a great tower to get there and see for themselves.

But their god, being God, was outraged at this boldness (or at least scared they’d pull it off), so he sent down upon men a “babble” of different languages (from the ancient Hebrew, "balal", meaning to jumble), a “confusion of tongues” to confuse the construction, and to set men against each other men.

So like a jealous god, isn’t he--jealous of men’s ability; jealous of what they can do. (And if he wasn’t scared they’d succeed, he wouldn’t have needed to send the babble.)

Anyway, Pieter Bruegel painted this depiction of the tower from his own imagination, at a time when the tallest building in the world was the north tower of Amiens Cathedral, which at 113m was tall, but not as tall as Brueghel needed. So the painter added a few Gothic flying buttresses to a core that looks remarkably like the Roman Colosseum, and hey presto, he’d combined much of human architectural history into a painting of a building that at once tells the story of man’s hubris, and at the same time shows his promise.