Alive
Painted in 1563. The tower already reaches the clouds and it is nowhere near finished. The floors at the bottom are still open shells while the top goes up in red brick. The arches are built square to the sloping ground, so the whole thing is unstable before it is done. The king at the lower left is taken to be Nimrod. He has come to look at the work, and the stonemasons have gone down on their knees. Bruegel put his name and the year on a block of stone at their feet. He had seen the Colosseum in Rome about 10 years before, and its stacked arches are the model for the tower. Bruegel painted the subject 3 times. The first was a miniature on ivory that belonged to Giulio Clovio, the painter he worked with in Rome. It is lost. This one, the biggest, was bought by the Antwerp banker Niclaes Jonghelinck, who owned 16 Bruegels by 1566. It went from him to the city of Antwerp and then to the Emperor Rudolf II, and it hangs in Vienna today. A smaller one hangs in Rotterdam. The Vienna panel is 114 cm by 155.
look closer
The king in the white cloak is taken to be Nimrod, come to inspect the work. The stonemasons go down on their knees, and Bruegel signed the panel on a stone block at their feet.
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