Bruegel the Elder, The Tower of Babel,  1563

As the story goes, Nimrod ordered the construction of the Tower of Babel as ruler of a unified, monolingual human race. The tower was meant to extend to heaven, as a symbol of what humanity could achieve. God took offense and scattered the gathered builders across the face of the earth, giving each group different languages so that they could never again work together. Scholars think the story of Babel was possibly inspired by a Mesopotamian ziggurat, the Etemenanki, which the Hebrews would have seen while captive in Babylon. Although nothing remains except ruins, it would have been 300 feet tall, roughly the height of the Statue of Liberty. Regardless of its origins, the story stands as a warning against human arrogance.

Bruegel actually painted this subject three times during his lifetime. The first, a miniature on ivory, has been lost; the version shown above is the larger of the two remaining. The other, painted last, is referred to as The "Little" Tower of Babel - this being one of the advanced distinctions art history professionals can make. Here, the tower dominates the canvas, spiraling upward in a vaguely organic fashion resembling a horn or a shell. The detailed landscape in the background marks it as a part of the Northern Renaissance. A figure, presumably Nimrod, stands in the foreground, inspecting the work. On closer inspection, the floors are not level and some of the arches are already crumbling. Workers are bickering, and the upper floors are being built before the lower are fully complete. The overall impression is of disaster before the project has even fully begun.

The architecture of Bruegel's tower resembles the Roman Colosseum, which Bruegel may have seen during his 1552 visit to Rome. For Christians of the time, Rome represented the ultimate transience and vanity: an empire that had intended to last forever but instead fell to decadence and decay. At Bruegel's time, rifts were growing within the Church. The repercussions of Martin Luther's reforms were still growing, and private worship was taking precedence over the rituals of the Church as a result of the New Devotion. Bruegel's painting serves as a warning against pride and an example of what little conflict and disunion achieves.