This piece is called The Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. This hyper-detailed painting leaves little to the imagination. But maybe you’re still wondering what is going on here.

Once upon a time in the far away land of Babylon, people decided to build a tower so tall, it would reach to the heavens. They wanted to be more like God. But God didn’t really like this at all and decided to turn their glorious tower into a crumbly lump. So God muddled their language so no one could understand each other. And this is how languages began and how this structure got the name The Tower of Babel.

This story is clearly rooted in a Christian perspective but is also based on Flavius Josephus’s Book Antiquities of the Jews that goes on to say that King Nimrod, the man to the left of the painting, was the visionary behind the construction of the tower of Babel. In fact, it’s believed that King Nimrod, dressed in Renaissance fashion, could be inspired by King Philip II. Both King’s had big plans that were destined to fail. While Nimrod’s tower was disrupted by the introduction of languages, Philip never learned to speak the languages of those in Antwerp in the first place, which only exacerbated religious tensions.

It’s possible that this painting is drawing a comparison between Babylon and Antwerp, the place the artist lived when he created this painting. Bruegel’s depiction of The Tower of Babel resembles the Colosseum in Rome, which may mean that he was drawing a comparison between Rome and Babylon.

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