The Tower of Babel, Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1563)
This painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, created in 1563, depicts the biblical story of the Tower of Babel. It shows a large tower, built by a unified humanity in an attempt to reach the heavens, surrounded by a sprawling city. The painting is filled with people of
The Tower of Babel was the subject of two surviving paintings and one lost painting by Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The earliest of the three, a miniature painted on ivory, was completed in 1552–1553 while Bruegel was in Rome, and is now lost. The two surviving works are oil paintings on wood panels, sometimes distinguished by the prefix "Great" and "Little" and by their present location: Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien in Vienna and the latter in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam. The Tower of Babel in Vienna is dated 1563, while the version in Rotterdam is undated but widely believed to have been painted sometime after.