My favourite painting  worldpaintings: Pieter Bruegel the Elder Tower of Babel, 1563, oil on panel, 114 × 155 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria. The painting of the greatest Flemish painter is a depiction of the architecture of the Tower of Babel with its numerous arches and other examples of Roman engineering. It is deliberately reminiscent of the Roman Colosseum, which Christians of the time saw as both a symbol of hubris and of persecution. The biblical story of the Tower of Babel is familiar to many as an attempt to explain the existence of diverse human languages. According to Genesis 11, all humans spoke the same language immediately following the flood of Noah. The Babylonians began building a tower that would reach into heaven for worshiping the sun, moon, and stars. Basically they were ambitiously striving to make a name for themselves and become equal to God. Angry at their arrogance, God decided to disrupt the work. He mixed up the languages of the workers so that they did not understand one another’s speech and therefore could not carry on building. In fact, the workers in the painting have built the arches perpendicular to the slanted ground, thereby making them unstable, and a few arches can already be seen crumbling. More troubling perhaps is the fact that the foundation and bottom layers of the tower had not been completed before the higher layers were constructed.

My favourite painting 

worldpaintings:

Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Tower of Babel, 1563, oil on panel, 114 × 155 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria.

The painting of the greatest Flemish painter is a depiction of the architecture of the Tower of Babel with its numerous arches and other examples of Roman engineering. It is deliberately reminiscent of the Roman Colosseum, which Christians of the time saw as both a symbol of hubris and of persecution.

The biblical story of the Tower of Babel is familiar to many as an attempt to explain the existence of diverse human languages. According to Genesis 11, all humans spoke the same language immediately following the flood of Noah. The Babylonians began building a tower that would reach into heaven for worshiping the sun, moon, and stars. Basically they were ambitiously striving to make a name for themselves and become equal to God.

Angry at their arrogance, God decided to disrupt the work. He mixed up the languages of the workers so that they did not understand one another’s speech and therefore could not carry on building. In fact, the workers in the painting have built the arches perpendicular to the slanted ground, thereby making them unstable, and a few arches can already be seen crumbling. More troubling perhaps is the fact that the foundation and bottom layers of the tower had not been completed before the higher layers were constructed.