The Tower of Babel (1563 and c. 1564)

Bruegel painted the subject of the Tower of Babel three times. The first version (now lost), very small and painted on ivory, is mentioned in the inventory of Giulio Clovio, the famous miniaturist, whom Bruegel met and collaborated with in Rome in 1553. The second version was a painting on panel, which is dated 1563 and now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, and the third was a smaller painting, now in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam. The Rotterdam painting is generally thought to date from a year or so after the picture in Vienna. The latter is more traditional in its treatment of the subject in that it includes the visit of King Nimrod to the incomplete Tower, in the lower right-hand corner.

The story of the Tower of Babel (like that of the Suicide of Saul) was interpreted as an example of pride punished, and that is no doubt what Bruegel intended his painting to illustrate.