The Tower of Babel

The Tower of Babel is the subject of three different oil paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The first, a miniature painted on ivory, was done while Bruegel was in Rome and, unfortunately has been lost. 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."' The story of the Tower of Babel was interpreted as an example of a punished pride. There is no doubt about what Bruegel intended his painting to illustrate.