Year 1563
Type of painting
wood, oil
author
The size
114 см. х 155 см.
Location
Historic museum of arts, Vienna
Tower of babel
16th century art of the Netherlands
The Tower of Babel is a famous painting by the artist Pieter Bruegel. This work is based on the biblical parable of human pride.
The picture is based on a plot from the First Book of Moses about the construction of the Tower of Babel, which was conceived by people in order to reach the sky with its peak: "Let's build ourselves a city and a tower with a height to heaven." To pacify their pride, God mixed their languages so that they could no longer understand each other and scattered them all over the earth, thus the construction was not completed.
The moral of this picture is the frailty of everything earthly and the futility of mortals' aspirations to compare with the Lord.
It is known that in 1553 Bruegel visited Rome. The Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel is easily recognizable as the Roman Colosseum with its typical features of Roman architecture: protruding columns, horizontal tiers and double arches. Seven floors of the tower have already been built in one way or another, the eighth floor is being built. The Tower of Babel is surrounded by building barracks, cranes, hoists used in those days, ladders and scaffolding. At the foot of the tower is a city with a busy port.
"1 In all the earth there was one language and one dialect. 2 Moving from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. 3 And they said to one another: Let us make bricks and burn them with fire. And they have bricks instead of stones, and earthen tar instead of lime. ”4 And they said,“ Let us build ourselves a city and a tower, whose height reaches the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered over the face of the whole earth. ”5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the sons of men had built. 6 And the Lord said: behold, one people, and all have one language; and this is what they began to do, and they will not leave behind what they thought to do; 7 let us go down and confuse their language there, so that one does not understand the speech of the other. The Lord came from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 Therefore, the name was given to him: Babylon, for there the Lord confused the language of all the earth, and from there the Lord scattered them over the whole earth. " (Genesis 11: 1-9)
People who live densely around the tower. Because there is always work where people build a name for themselves, because most of the money is spent on building a name. (you can look at modern examples) and there is always work, and we see that crowds of workers
1-Dreaming
2-Rejoice that life is good.
3-We're doing it. I have an idea.
4- Let's earn extra money and We succeed
5-We'll get it. We've got nothing to lose.
In other words, people do not take lessons from history and continue to build their tower of Babel. I propose to look at this picture from afar. And we see that history repeats itself.
Who are you? Are you building a name for yourself and spending your life on it. Or did you take lessons from history and live for the glory of God
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