MORRA 2007 Art History

UTOPIA LOST: ALLEGORY, RUINS AND PIETER
BRUEGELS TOWERS OF BABEL

JOANNE MORRA
Allegories are, in the realm of thoughts, what ruins are in the realm of things.
Walter Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama1
One of the most common attributes ascribed by art historians to the work of
Pieter Bruegel the Elder is its allegorical character. What is meant by this claim is
that the content of the art work depicts one thing while having an alternative
moral or didactic meaning. This familiar understanding of allegory often
employed as a means of obtaining a singular, iconographic meaning for Bruegels
work is being supplemented by more recent methodological discussions which
explicitly focus and utilize the ambiguous, contradictory and dialectical aspects
of his art. These analyses are also concerned with his works social, political,
historical and phenomenological contexts.2 Bruegels two paintings of the Tower
of Babel the focus of this article are no exception to this transformation. Within
the art-historical literature on the Babel paintings, their allegorical character is
often discussed in relation to history, nature, sovereignty, Utopia and ruins.
Intriguingly, these ideas and tropes resonate with Walter Benjamins important
writings on allegory and ruins within the early modern period. It is this echo,
as yet unnoted, between the works of art, the ideas they elicit, and Benjamins
dialectical philosophy that interests me in this text.
In order to arrive at the allegorical and dialectical character of the paintings,
it is important to remember that they depict a fundamental allegory within
Western thought: the story of the Tower of Babel. As such, I consider what
Breugels representations have to say about the narrative, in light of the storys
philological, philosophical and genealogical significance. And I do this with the
assistance of Jacques Derridas reading of the biblical account of the Tower of
Babel. What emerges is a correspondence between the paintings, the art-historical
literature and the philosophical analysis. This correlation revolves around ideas
that are relevant to Bruegels work, his time and the various discourses brought to
bear on them: notions such as contradiction, incompletion, translation,
authority, genealogy and history.
In bringing these art-historical and philosophical concerns together here, I
hope to make an intervention into our understanding of allegory and its dialectical nature in both Bruegels and Benjamins work. The dialectic posited by these
paintings and writings reconfigures both our knowledge of Bruegels work, and
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ART HISTORY . ISSN 0141-6790 . VOL 30 NO 2 . APRIL 2007 pp 198-216

& Association of Art Historians 2007. Published by Blackwell Publishing,
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
Plate 3.1 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Tower of Babel, 1563. Oil on panel, 114 x 155 cm, signed and dated, BRUEGEL FE. M. CCCCLXIII.
Vienna: Kunsthistorisches Museum.
A L L E G O R Y, R U I N S A N D B R U E G E L S T O W E R S O F B A B E L
& ASSOCIATION OF ART HISTORIANS 2007
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the methodological concerns it elicits; as well as Benjamins oft-quoted statement

allegories are, in the realm of thoughts, what ruins are in the realm of things.
S I T U AT I N G B R U E G E L S T O W E R S O F B A B E L
Between 1553 and 1568 Bruegel produced at least three paintings of the Tower of
Babel. The earliest is a miniature painted on ivory, produced while he was
working in Giulio Clovios studio in Rome. Dated around 1553, this work is
mentioned in Clovios inventory of 1577 and is now lost, leaving only two extant
panel paintings.3 The second, large Tower of Babel panel, now housed in the
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, is signed by the artist and dated 1563 (plate
3.1). It is likely that the Vienna painting was commissioned by the financier
Nichalaes Jonghlick, and then owned by Emperor Rudolph II. The third, small
Tower of Babel, possibly also purchased by the Emperor, and now in the Museum
Boymans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, is neither signed nor dated, and is attributed to various dates between 1563 and 1568 (plate 3.2).
The art-historical literature on the Tower of Babel paintings offers a microcosm
of the more general methodological and interpretive interests in Bruegel studies.
The differences between the two extant paintings as well as the ambiguities and
contradictions within each of them has elicited much scholarly debate about
their iconographic and formal qualities, as well as their allegorical, literary,
theological, social, political and geographic references and contexts. Throughout
these discussions, the story of the Tower of Babel is duly noted, and many scholars
point to the Genesis narrative as the paintings point of departure.4 The biblical
narrative begins in Genesis 10:810 and continues in 11:110. Nimrod, the leader
of the Shem and the Kingdom of Babel, settles with his people in the land of
Shinar. There they share one language, and one speech. Together they begin to
build a city, and a tower that would reach the heavens so that they can make a
name for themselves. In witnessing their endeavours, God recognizes their
imminent omnipotence and authority, and decides to halt their progress. He
pronounces the polysemous and contradictory word Babel thereby confounding
their language; scattering them abroad; and ensuring that the project remains
incomplete forever. The result of these events is the instigation of multiple
languages and genealogies, and with that, the need for translation in order for
communication to take place.
Interpretations of the biblical story of the Tower of Babel are plentiful.
However, the most useful for my purposes here is the one by Derrida in his essay
Des Tours de Babel because he considers issues that I find relevant to Bruegels
paintings. As I will go on to examine, the paintings provoke and echo many of the
concerns already highlighted through the biblical narrative, as well as those
taken up by Derrida, issues such as authority, contradiction, genealogy, translation and incompletion.5 For Derrida, the biblical narrative initiates a peoples
desire to build a city and a tower and give themselves a name so that they can
claim an identity and genealogy, and empower themselves with their own law
and authority. However, this is not to happen, of course, because, as Derrida and
so many before and since have pointed out, a jealous God metes out punishment.
God obstructs his peoples desires and plans by pronouncing Babel. As Derrida
reminds us, it is important to recall that Babel means God the father, the name of
the father, and the city of God, as well as confusion. Babel is polysemous, confused
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Plate 3.2 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Tower of Babel, c. 15631568. Oil on panel, 60 74 cm. Rotterdam: Museum
Boijmans Van Beuningen.
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and means confusion. With this in mind, Derrida spells out how the word
that is both a proper noun and means confusion, is annunciated so as to
confound a peoples singular tongue. This brings about a confusion of languages
and with it linguistic and epistemological ambiguity, contradiction and incommensurability. In order to communicate, translation is now required, and yet
translation between languages and full communication is always, like Babel,
impossible. Moreover, for Derrida, this biblical event reveals how God initiates
divisions amongst his people and their aspirations for authorial and genealogical
singularity, and how God mandates that the project of Babel remain forever
incomplete.
Although Derridas text is not referenced within the Bruegel scholarship,
some of the issues he analyses, such as authority, genealogy, translation,
language and the incomplete project of Babel, are implied. And it is to these arthistorical discourses that I now turn.
The issue of a proper authority, of pride punished, while being one of the
more obvious allegorical interpretations of the biblical narrative, is used to
support a reading of Bruegels two paintings as commentaries on social mores.
Thus, the appearance of a Tower of Babel painting (artist unspecified) in the
procession of the Feast of the Assumption in Antwerp in 1561 is said to signify the
chastisement of pride and presumption. The architectural similarities of Bruegels tower to the Coliseum and thus to the power, authority and genealogy of
Imperial Rome, as well as its collapse, is noted in much of the art-historical
literature. Edward A. Snow has written that the reference to the Coliseum alludes
to the crown of a civilization that Renaissance humanism sought to recover and
surpass, but also a symbol of pagan arrogance and a reminder of contemporary
Romanist oppression of the Flemish Lowlands.6 More contemporaneously,
Luther referred to the biblical narrative as a means of unifying his forces against
the Curia whom he saw as the novelle Babylone.7 Importantly, the art-historical
literature notes that both Catholics and Protestants cite the Tower of Babel during
the sixteenth century as a symbol of the dissolution of Christianity into warring
factions.8 Such a reference to factions reminds us of Derridas reading of the
genealogical multiplicity initiated by Babel and the need for translation. This
Babelian dissolution into warring factions in the sixteenth century is
witnessed, for example, in the loss of the Spanish Catholic king Philip IIs control
over those whom he considered to be Flemish heretics and the failure and
incompletion of his project; and in the philological and theological discussions
on the translation of the vernacular Bible by Reformist and humanist scholars
during this time.9
In more broadly social terms, the iconography of the Tower of Babel is said to
reflect the linguistic and cultural challenges faced by an economically prosperous, cosmopolitan and multicultural centre, such as sixteenth-century
Antwerp possibly the city represented in Bruegels Vienna painting10 about
which Lodovico Guicciardini wrote in his Description of All the Low Countries of 1567:
It is indeed amazing to see such a mass of men of so many different temperaments and kinds.
And . . . more wonderful still to find such a variety of languages, differing so much from one
another . . . Without leaving one town you can see, and even imitate exactly, the manner of
living and habits of many distant nations.11
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In addition, aspects of Bruegels Vienna Tower of Babel (plate 3.1) are understood
phenomenologically as a means of gathering the contradictions of their age, and
a medium for exploring them.12 What is demonstrated by all these examples is
that the paintings are representative of both the outcome of Babel, and Derridas
philosophical interpretation of it as an event constituted by contradiction and
incompletion, authorial interrogation, genealogical dissemination, and the
necessary and impossible task of translation. Methodologically, the various
interpretations also point to the multiple and contradictory interests that have
emerged from Bruegels Tower of Babel paintings, and his work more generally, in
terms of the artists political, theological, cultural, social, historical and artistic
position. As Fritz Grossmann states clearly:
The interpretation of Bruegel, the man and the work, from his day to ours, presents a bewildering spectacle. The man has been thought to have been a peasant and a townsman, an
orthodox Catholic and a libertine, a humanist, a laughing and a pessimistic philosopher; the
artist appeared as a follower of Bosch and a continuation of the Flemish tradition, the last of
the Primitives, a Mannerist in contact with Italian art, an illustrator, a genre painter, a
landscape artist, a realist, a painter consciously transforming reality and adapting it to his
formal ideal [these are] the sum of just a few opinions expressed by various observers in the
course of four hundred years.13
MANSBACHS TOWERS OF BABEL
Amidst these interpretations, S.A. Mansbachs article of 1982 on the two Bruegel
paintings in Zeitschrift f u. r Kunstgeschichte stands out because of its substantive
historical analysis, and its reading of the paintings in terms which also interest
me here. Mansbachs essay considers the ways in which Bruegels paintings of the
Tower of Babel provide the modern historian with significant clues about the
artists relation to contemporary political and intellectual events and figures,
namely the plight of Reformist intellectuals under Spanish rule and their deep
longing for an ideal liberal community.14 Within this context, the depiction of a
king in the foreground of the Vienna painting (plate 3.3), as well as Bruegels
signature and dating of it (on a block of cut stone in the foreground), are
understood as outward signs of power and vanity, particularly those of Philip IIs
tyrannical rule over the Low Countries. Although Mansbach proposes that the
genealogy of Philip IIs reign connects him to Alexander the Great and back to the
biblical Nimrod, he argues that the sovereign depicted in the Vienna painting
represents the historical figure Philip II.
Mansbach approaches this proposition on several fronts. First, he suggests
that the painting portrays the artists contemporary social and urban situation
because the tower is placed within the boundaries of a prosperous sixteenthcentury city, a city reminiscent of Antwerp [t]o the right is a bustling harbour
scene [. . .] Balancing the harbour scene on the left is a crowded cityscape; and in
the background beyond the city walls, a gently rolling farm and forest landscape
recedes into the distance.15 The tower is comprised of Roman and Babylonian
architecture thereby representing a contemporary Babylonia occidentalis.16
Second, Mansbach proposes that the painting is the artists coded and disparaging
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response to the Spanish kings harsh and brutal political and religious treatment
of the heretical Flemish population in the 1550s and 1560s. Third,
[w]hereas Nimrods ambition was only confounded by the diversification of language after
beginning the symbolic tower, Philips enterprise might have been perceived as foredoomed
before even starting, since the Spanish king and his Flemish subjects were already estranged by
language: the king being unable to speak either Dutch or French.17
Like many liberal-minded Catholics and Protestant intellectuals some of

whom were Bruegels friends and acquaintances who put their lives and livelihoods at risk in order to make even the most subtle criticism towards their
foreign oppressor, Mansbach suggests that Bruegel also attempted to do this
through his work. The art historian proposes that the artists critical appraisal of
contemporary events can be discerned in his representation of Philip II as a latterday Nimrod. Therefore, for Mansbach, the Vienna painting configures the present
as a continuum of the past; a continuum of tyrannical rule leading from Babel to
Plate 3.3 Detail of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Tower of Babel, 1563. Vienna: Kunsthistorisches Museum.
the confusion of multiple religions and tongues during the Reformation, and to
Philip IIs extremely brutal methods of attempting to re-establish religious and
civic order out of what the king saw as chaos. As such, the Vienna painting
ultimately represents for Mansbach the failure of the biblical project and by
extension that of Philip II. He notes:
upon closer inspection the ant-like labourers are engaged in transforming a mountainous
rock into a colossal turret. This incredible task is nothing less than the total transformation
of nature and the natural order through the compulsion of kingly hubris. But such a
transformation is necessarily a gargantuan failure, for within every level a completed section
is juxtaposed with an area just begun. No level is finished nor is there evidence that any ever
will be.18
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The failure is unmitigated. A transformation of nature and the natural order

in the Vienna painting is, for Mansbach, impossible, because the historical
circumstances under Philip IIs rule ensure that it is a failure. At every stage, the
labourers and thus the kings entire enterprise are thwarted. As one area of the
tower is being built, another remains incomplete and falling to ruins, thereby
resembling the past grandeur of the Coliseum and its ruined imperial might.19
For Mansbach, the ruinous Vienna tower and the historical conditions it
references Philip IIs hubristic agenda, his authority and genealogy are
gargantuan failures.
The ruinous failure represented in and by the historical Vienna painting
is, for Mansbach, inversely depicted in the allegorical, utopic Arcadia of the
Rotterdam Tower of Babel (plate 3.2). Mansbach writes:
[t]he absence of [Bruegels] signature [in the Rotterdam painting] is paralleled by the absence of
the king and his retainers. Deleting reference both to the power of the royal patron and to the
painters own power of creation would remove the extreme emphasis on human vanity which
was so pronounced in the earlier panel [. . .] Indeed, all earlier references to individual
personality both narrative and artistic have been subordinated to architecture.20
Thus, in Mansbachs view, the references to individual personality and power

to authority and genealogy so pronounced in the Vienna painting have been
subordinated in the Rotterdam work (plate 3.2) to a tower that occupies most of
the paintings composition, and whose architectural components, although a
motley composite, can be identified as Near Eastern, Roman and Romanesque.
For Mansbach:
[t]he Rotterdam tower is not a transformed rock pile [as is the Vienna tower]; rather it is a spiral
ramp rising heavenward from a solid man-made foundation. Each level is complete; in fact, a
full two-thirds of the depicted tower is finished . . . [So] advanced is the tower that episodic
vignettes of daily life are captured by the painter, as in the religious procession winding its way
upward which may indicate the regularity of an established community life.21
As for the crisis in theological authority brought on by humanist and Reformist

intellectuals particularly in their vernacular translations of the Bible, embodied
in Christophe Plantins publication of the Polyglot Bible (156873) Mansbach
writes that:
the attempt to investigate the original languages of the sacred texts may be seen as complementary to Bruegels message in his Rotterdam Tower of Babel panel. Both painter and printer
[Plantin] shared the (basically humanist) hope that through returning to the atavistic sources of
sacral language somehow a harmonious and religious world might be posited for the future.22
In Mansbachs reading the Rotterdam tower projects into the future this hope
as it spirals upwards, so that it cannot be contained or imaginatively completed
within the picture plane [in fact . . .] the structure will soon transcend the space
of the picture support. The imminence of this moment gives little hint that
this architectural undertaking will result in tragedy. Unlike the necessarily
gargantuan failure of the Vienna project, the Rotterdam tower, set in an idyllic,
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bucolic landscape the natural world seemingly unburdened by any signs of

power and authority is, for Mansbach, the tower which promises linguistic
unification: the tower of the future, a utopic tower of Babel. Mansbach notes that
in the Rotterdam painting, Bruegel has shown us the greatness and power of
human productivity made possible in the absence of a tyrants hubristic will. The
artist has given his contemporaries and us a glimpse of the humanists ideal city,
a terrestrial Utopia. Mansbach concludes this less historical, and more philosophical, analysis of the Rotterdam Tower of Babel with the following implied
Protestant ethic: In a word, Bruegel has provided a visual metaphor of mankind
in a state of grace: Babel has been remedied.23 But the questions to be asked are:
has Babel been remedied? can Babel be remedied?
AN ALLEGORY IN RUINS: THE VIENNA TOWER OF BABEL
Mansbachs reading of Bruegels Tower of Babel paintings juxtaposes the two

paintings and their interpretations. On the one hand, he proposes that the
Vienna painting (plate 3.1) represents humanitys ruinous attempt to control
nature and the natural order through history the latter embodied in the
historically specific figure of Philip II, his genealogical power and authority, and
Bruegels signing and dating of the work. On the other hand, Mansbach suggests
that the Rotterdam painting (plate 3.2) is an allegorical, philosophical and utopic
visual metaphor of humankind in a natural and idyllic state of grace a moment
of imminent transcendence. The main issues raised by Mansbach that interest me
in this article are the relationships he posits between: history and nature; a kings
authority, power and genealogy versus a state of grace; ruins as opposed to allegory. While keeping Mansbachs reading in mind, I now offer an alternative
interpretation of the paintings that takes up these same tropes, but to different
ends. My aim is to establish an analysis of the paintings separate from
Mansbachs, and then to bring our readings together under the auspices of
Bruegels dialectical practice and Benjamins dialectical philosophy.
Mansbachs interests in allegory and ruins, history and nature, authority,
power, genealogy and a state of grace are all tropes that emerge from his analysis
of Bruegels paintings. As I discussed earlier, these tropes are implied also within
the biblical story of the Tower of Babel, and are taken up by Derrida in his reading
of the narrative and its relationship to language, knowledge and genealogy.
Building upon all these works the paintings, the art-historical, the biblical and
the philosophical I would now like to add another layer to the analysis by
considering these paintings and tropes through Benjamins writings on allegory
and ruins. I am particularly interested in the relationship between Benjamins
understanding of allegory and ruins, and his notion of the dialectic between
history and philosophy as founded upon his concept of natural history. These
tropes allegory, ruins, history, philosophy, nature are specifically those that I
have already shown to be central to the art-historical reflections evoked by
Bruegels Tower of Babel paintings, and the philosophical considerations that have
emerged out of the biblical narrative.
In The Origin of German Tragic Drama, Benjamin states that, [i]t is by virtue of a
strange combination of nature and history [natural history] that the allegorical
mode of expression is born.24 The strange combination to which he is referring
is his understanding of the dialectic. Despite the echo of an indebtedness to a
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certain Hegelianism, the dialectic is not Hegels dialectic, because the reconciliation found in Hegel is nowhere to be found in Benjamin.25 For Benjamin, the
dialectic is on the one hand a process of restoration and reestablishment, but, on
the other hand, and precisely because of this, [. . .] something imperfect and
incomplete.26 This is quite clearly then a process of growth and regeneration
based upon irreducible difference and necessary incompletion.
Benjamin continues his discussion of the dialectic by stating that: [t]here
takes place in every original phenomenon a determination of the form in which an
idea will constantly confront the historical world, until it is revealed fulfilled, in
the totality of history. (authors emphasis)27 Natural history is a dialectic that
brings together an idea and its own hidden history, as it simultaneously figures
historical data in the representation or staging of the idea.28 Natural history is
both an idea and its historical, material representation. It is philosophical and
material. In other words, natural history is constituted by a duality: on the one
hand, an idea or philosophical thought; and on the other, a phenomenon as historical
and material manifestation.
Thus, natural history sets a dialectic in motion which, at one and the same
time, inscribes a process of restoration, of becoming, and yet defines an incomplete project; it represents the historical materiality of the dialectic while also
figuring the philosophical relations between the material elements. It is by way of
this strange combination that the allegorical mode of expression is born. It is
this dialectic, between the philosophical and the historical-material within
natural history, that circumscribes allegory, and its relationship to ruins; and is
fundamental to my reading of Bruegels paintings as dialectical. With this in
mind, I will turn, once more, to the paintings, to their history, and to the
philosophical concerns represented in and by them.
The Vienna Tower of Babel (plate 3.1) privileges a king, his law, authority and
genealogy, and once again, we hear the echoes of Derridas interpretation of
Babel. For Mansbach, the king (plate 3.3) represents Philip II. However, other
scholars have found this identification debatable because, [i]n Europe, subjects
went down before potentates on only one knee; going down on both, the kowtow,
is Bruegels sole indication that the king in question here is from the Middle
East.29 The impossibility of definitively pinpointing whether the king is Nimrod
or Philip II concurs with the more recent art-historical understanding of Bruegels
work as ambiguous and contradictory. Having said that, the depiction of a king in
a representation of the Tower of Babel does imply an interest in the issues of
sovereignty, authority, law and genealogy, issues raised by Derrida in relation to
Babel and Bruegel through his painting. In considering the Vienna Tower of Babel,
I would like to follow Mansbach and wrap the king in the robes of Philip II. But I do
so for different reasons. Mansbach interprets the king as the historical figure of
Philip II in order to establish his vanity and pride as the grounds for his downfall
and that of his agenda in the Low Countries. In contrast to this, I would like to
consider Philip II as a representative, an allegory of sovereignty. More precisely, I
would like to suggest that the king in the Vienna Tower of Babel represents both the
historical and philosophical aspects of allegory, and their figuration in Benjamins
writings on sovereignty, authority and law in early modern Europe.
For Benjamin, the prince is an allegorical figure during the early modern
period, and, as such, he is not only:
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the hero of an antique triumph but he is at the same time directly associated with divine
beings, served and celebrated by them: thus he is himself deified. Earthly and heavenly figures
mingle in his train and contribute to the same idea of glorification.30
In other words, the king is representative of both an historical and divine

presence on earth. If the sovereign falls, he does so, in his own name, as an
individual, but [also] as a ruler and in the name of mankind and history [. . .] his
fall has the quality of a judgment.31 As an allegorical representation, the kings
presence in Bruegels Vienna Tower of Babel embodies both earthly and divine
law and authority, and, as such, is both an historical and philosophical figure. The
historical and philosophical judgement pronounced in his fall, is the judgement
of Babel.
Historically, Philip IIs inauguration has an echo of Babel. Being unable to
speak any language but Castilian, and not having taken the advice to learn other
languages, the king was ensconced in a complex linguistic dilemma. And he was
in constant need of a translator.32 An example of this is the kings inaugural
speech in the Low Countries that was not in French or Dutch, but in Spanish.
This serious disregard for cultural and linguistic difference continued
throughout his reign.33
The difficult and acrimonious start to the relationship between the king and
Flanders was compounded by his unwavering alliance with the Catholic Church
and the position he took within it as the absolute representative of Gods law. His
statecraft was premised upon his ability to carry out Gods duty to rid his empire
of heretics.34 The king rallied against the confusion that he thought was
brought about by the spread of Protestantism in the Low Countries in the
formation of the Compromise, the hedge preaching, the conventicles [secret
meetings], the image breaking, and the alliance between Calvinist nobles and
burghers and the formation of the gueux, otherwise known as the Beggars.35
Phillip II ensured that the spread of Protestantism was brutally repressed by
setting up secret consulta, which spied on the Flemish and their representatives, and by instigating new bishropics, which enabled him to maintain control
and authority within the Churchs administration so as to achieve religious
unification.36
As well as Philips linguistic, cultural and authoritative vanity, and religious
intolerance, the Flemish were also concerned about their lack of political representation; the rapid industrialization of large cities and the spread of these
metropolisies into the countryside; the extremely high rate of unemployment
and the food shortages; and an overstretched political project, burdened by
continual warfare, which led to unbearably high taxation. In the face of these
crises, the breach between the people and their noble representatives, and
the kings political and religious ambassadors, is symptomatic of larger problems
and changes.
One of the first important moments in the peoples challenge to the king and
his representatives came in 1563, the same year that Bruegel painted the Vienna
Tower of Babel. In March 1563 the noblemen Egmont, William of Orange, Philippe
de Montmorency and the count of Hornes sent a letter to Philip II criticizing his
policies and threatening to resign from their governmental posts if Granvelle (the
bishop of Arras, cardinal of Mechlin and head of the States General) was not
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dismissed. At this point, the crisis was gathering momentum. Despite a series of
political promises by the king and his representatives, the provinces and town
councils remained loyal to their own people, who refused to pay the kings taxes,
or uphold the placards against heresy because they believed in religious tolerance. From the noblemens point of view, the crisis was political; from the
perspective of the king and his representatives the problem was a religious one
fought under the rubric of political stability. Ultimately, Philip IIs conception of
himself as the bearer of Gods authority, which he considered as sanctioning his
agenda to rid his empire of heretics, and produce unity out of what he saw as
chaos, cost him the Low Countries.
Under these complex historical conditions, the Vienna Tower of Babel can be
said allegorically to represent the kings inability to maintain what Benjamin has
called his historical and divine authority, law and order. The duality of allegorys structure, based upon its formation through natural history, precipitates a
reading of the kings body in the painting historically and philosophically.
Historically, Flanders as Babel, with its cosmopolitan city centres, such as
Antwerp and Brussels, along with its own governing Council, would not abide by
a singular, foreign sovereigns control. Terrestrial divinity is, like God, a jealous
figure that ends up punishing his people for their supposed crimes their desire
to name themselves, build their own tower and city, and set up their own political
laws and religious beliefs. It can be argued, as it has been by Mansbach, that the
Vienna painting depicts the sovereigns inability to maintain rule in a chaotic
situation. The kings impotence in the painting resembles Philip IIs position in
relation to an increasingly powerful oligarchy that came to represent the political
and religious rights of the Low Countries.
The kings authority in the Vienna Tower of Babel is undermined by the chaos,
ambiguity and contradictions represented in the building project itself, issues
which Derrida raised in his reading of the biblical story. In the painting, the
natural, rock pile out of which the tower is being carved contradicts the need for
the building materials shipped to the port. The tower has contradictory architectural forms and styles. It is inappropriate that the homes that are inhabited are
located underneath freshly built buttressing that is propping up an unstable and
deteriorating structure. There is the matter of the perplexing organization of the
city wall and its unresolved relationship to the city gate. And finally, the matter of
the kings ambiguous identity that undermines his authority and power: some
workmen genuflect, while others are seemingly oblivious of his authority, and
ignore his presence (plate 3.3). The sovereign is undermined by his own ineffectual signifiers of power and genealogy: his robe, sceptre and crown. The Vienna
painting represents an allegorical judgement: the failure of the kings agenda, his
power and authority, and the project of Babel.
Allegorys presence during the Reformation denotes a specific type of authority. Benjamin writes:
the allegorical form [. . .] finds expression in the form adequate from a historico-philosophical
standpoint to those ages in which mans relation to the absolute has become problematic i.e.,
in which that relation has ceased to be immanent to life. Consequently, allegory devalues
everything tainted by this worldliness the material content of its personages, emblems, and
situations turning them instead into lifeless signposts of an enigmatic path to the absolute.37
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It can be argued that it is this path, the allegorical one on the way to the absolute
always an imperfect and incomplete project as Derrida has informed us about
Babel, and Benjamin about the dialectic that is figured in the Vienna painting.
In such a reading, every natural detail in the Vienna painting, its materiality
represented in the historical present, becomes tainted by decay: the mountainous
rock pile; the towers architectural rise to ruins; the immanent Babelian outcome
for the city and countryside; the kings fall from grace. The painting represents
the viewpoint of the kings divine authority, and yet, the decaying, material
fragments of the tower and its surround are reminders of the sovereigns ailing
authority in the historical present. In other words, the Vienna Tower of Babel can
be said to represent the becoming of allegory becoming ruins.
HISTORY IN RUINS: THE ROTTERDAM TOWER OF BABEL
In an inversion of Mansbachs interpretation of the Rotterdam Tower of Babel (plate

3.2) as figuring an allegorical Utopia, an idealization of nature, and imminent
transcendence, I would like to put forward a reading of it as representative of the
tyranny of the authority of the historical present: a tyranny founded upon the
unfeasibility of completing both the tower and the Babelian project, in the
context of major historical crises and upheavals.
Between 1563 and 1568 the time within which Bruegel is said to have
painted the Rotterdam work the hostilities towards Philip II escalated. In order
to placate the nobles, Philip removed Granvelle from Flanders. This did not solve
the crisis. Many of the nobles would simply not abide by the anti-heresy laws that
the king had implemented. Fearing the Spanish Inquisition, and yet disagreeing
with the kings policies on religion, the Flemish began systematically to defy
Philips anti-heresy placards, and several prominent noblemen privately agreed to
challenge them. The king, however, refused to be swayed. He believed that a
decrease in heretical laws would only lead to revolt and the political upheaval of
the Low Countries. Philip II was preparing for military action.
In July 1566 the king was informed of the spread of Calvinist preaching and
the insurrection that was being planned by the noblemen. Philip IIs resolve grew
stronger; in a letter to Emperor Maximilian II and the German princes, he wrote:
you can assure His Holiness [the Pope] that rather than suffer the least injury to religion and
the service of God, I would lose all my states and a hundred lives if I had them, for I do not
intend to rule over heretics.38
The Flemish response to the kings position was the Wonderyear: a time of
widespread mass rioting, plundering of churches and monasteries and the
breaking of the images.39 In December Philip II decided to take the military
option. In an attempt to avert this attack, Margaret of Parma (the Regent and
governor general of the Low Countries, who was sympathetic to her peoples
cause), Orange, Egmont and other noblemen began to cleanse the Low Countries
of visibly public Calvinist markings. But it was too late. In the spring of 1567 the
Duke of Alva and his troops marched into the Low Countries. On 22 August Alva
entered Brussels with an army of 10,000 troops. On 5 September the Council of
Troubles was set up. The Inquisition had arrived.
210
Alvas reign of terror was absolute. Both Protestants and Catholics were
indiscriminately condemned for heresy. Those that participated in the rebellions
of 1566 were the first to be executed or otherwise punished. Thousands of people
were executed for heresy under the laws of the Council of Troubles, also known as
the Council of Blood. Alva described Antwerp as a Babylon, confusion and
receptacle of all sects indifferently and as the town most frequented by pernicious
people.40 By the end of 1567 the Low Countries had been cleansed. On 5 June
the following year, counts Egmont and Hornes were beheaded for high treason.
Later in his life Philip remained unrepentant; he wrote:
the ruinous and sad state in which matters of religion stand. The example of events in the
Netherlands, caused by laxity, license, and consentment, is sufficient to make one see clearly
that a different road has to be pursued. If there is division and disagreement over religion,
neither government nor state nor the authority of princes nor peace and concord and tranquillity among subjects can be maintained.41
It seems, then, that the historical crisis of sovereignty coincided with the
dissemination of divine power, authority and genealogy. The turmoil that took
place between 1563 and the end of 1567 began as a political crisis but came to be
represented as an overtly and singularly religious one. During this time, Bruegel
painted the Rotterdam Tower of Babel. With the sinister repercussions of the kings
imposition of the Inquisition, and the Council of Bloods brutal reign of terror,
Bruegel returned to the myth of the Tower of Babel. This time he painted it
without a king, without a signature, and without a city. Instead, he placed an
architecturally ambiguous tower in the countryside, dark storm clouds ominous
and threatening above, and a religious procession wending its way up its side,
visible in the centre of the third level. The Rotterdam painting is radically
different from the earlier Vienna version. As I have discussed, the political crisis
had become first and foremost a religious one. Within this historical context, I
would like to suggest that we consider the Rotterdam Tower of Babel as representative of the critical state of the Churchs authority.
For Mansbach, the Rotterdam painting represents the moment of the towers
completion, its imminence; and this achievement is highlighted by the religious
procession. However, this same procession is also a sign of the peoples present,
historical and temporal worship of Gods authority. Some scholars have discussed
the presence amidst the procession of a Catholic baldachin or canopy42 and if
so, what exactly is the state of grace, with its Protestant echo, that Mansbach
implies in his reading? Unlike Mansbach who interprets this temporality of the
present, as a sign of Utopia, of linguistic unification, of Babel remedied, I
would like to consider the Rotterdam Tower of Babel as representative of history in
the transience of its ruins.
In Mansbachs reading of the Rotterdam painting the crisis in biblical
translation during the Reformation was transformed by Bruegel into an
harmonious and religious world [. . .] posited for the future.43 However, it can
also be argued that the crisis of authority in sixteenth-century Europe was a
product of the destabilization of the theological and philosophical paradigms inherited from the Middle Ages, due in part to a new desire amongst
thinkers to translate the Bible.44 We are once more reminded of Derridas
211
reading of Babel. A novel interest in the literary, rather than solely theological,
value of the Bible and its exegesis led to an alternative understanding of the
Scripture. A philological analysis of the word of God proved to have devastating
consequences for the Catholic Church and its sovereign representative. As G.R.
Evans writes:
[u]nderlying [Biblical translation . . .] is the question [. . .]: which is the true text of Scripture, and
how far can it be said to subsist in a version in a language different from the original. Where
lies the authoritative version?45
The philological and theological translation of the Bible during the time in
which Bruegel painted his Tower of Babel paintings makes it appropriate to ask, as
does Derrida of the translative beginnings within the Babel narrative: where does
authority lie?
Throughout the sixteenth century the desire for unity in the word of God
during the act of biblical translation was deemed impossible. As humanists and
Reformists continued to translate the Bible into polyglot texts, the Catholic
Church (and the sovereign) found itself in a state of authorial crisis. Each new
translation meant a testing of the Churchs authority because the word of God,
upon which it was based, was being debated, argued over and transformed. This
crisis is quite simply the result of Babel. And it brings to mind Derridas reading of
that narrative in terms of the dissemination of one language into many, the
concomitant need and impossibility of translation, and the effects this had on
authority and genealogy. Europe in the sixteenth century played out the repercussions of Babel in that the unification of authority in Gods word (and its
singular translation) became an impossible dream.
As opposed to Mansbachs reading of the Rotterdam Tower of Babel as a state of
grace, of Babel remedied, the painting can be understood as representing the
Babelian problematic through the historical and political impasse discussed
above, and as embodied in a translative crisis in theological authority. As Derrida
has shown us, the story of the Tower of Babel is one in which linguistic, epistemological and genealogical authority are cast into doubt. During the sixteenth
century, the furore around biblical translation had the same effect, and resulted
in the execution of heretics.
In this historical context, Bruegel depicted an alternative version of the
biblical narrative, this one including a religious procession. It is difficult to say
whether the Rotterdam painting is a critique of the Churchs repression of
alternative religions, and by extension Philip IIs brutal and oppressive treatment
of heretics, or a commentary on the breakdown of Church authority, but a
connection can be drawn between the theological and political crisis in authority
and the philosophical crisis of the Tower of Babel. Rather than representing a
state of grace, it can be argued that the Rotterdam Tower of Babel represents the
necessary and impossible task of translation as a necessary impossibility. The
workers keep building, translations of the Bible persist, the tower is never
complete, the true word of God is unobtainable, and yet the tasks remain; they
plead for completion in their ruinous decay.
As Mansbach argues, it is possible to view the plea represented in the
Rotterdam painting as one for unification. He proposes that the Rotterdam Tower
212
of Babel represents a humanist desire for a utopic community and city, for a state
of grace in which religious tolerance produces a situation in which Babel is
remedied. However, it is important to point out that the Rotterdam painting does
not include a city, a sign of communal Utopia. Rather than representing a utopic
future, nature idealized, a state of grace, it can be argued that each brick in the
Rotterdam tower, each task and event represented in the painting, is functional,
useful, material. It represents, in Benjamins terms, the materiality of history. The
confused architectural design of the tower is made up of specific historical styles
which can be identified: Near Eastern, Roman, Romanesque. The thunderous
clouds in the painting darken its sky warning of a foreboding storm, the historical
crises loom large. The paintings vantage point is terrestrial, human, and thus of
the historical present. The tower will not have continual access to ever more
growth, as Mansbach suggests, because the completion of the tower, and Babel, is
impossible, and indeed, the frame literally cuts off the tip of the tower.46 It can be
proposed that the painting is repeatedly inscribed with the markings of history,
of materiality, of a transient present.
Moreover, as Mansbach informs us in his analysis of the Vienna painting, the
Babelian project is an a priori failure. The evidence in the Rotterdam Tower of Babel
as well, with its present, historical and temporal conditions, concurs with what
the biblical story has foretold: that there will never be linguistic unification, a
singular community, a state of grace. The narrative of the Tower of Babel is
inappropriate for the conveyance of a state of grace. In 1567, after Alvas religious
massacres and the effects of the Wonderyear, it would be difficult to interpret a
reference to the Church the procession in the Rotterdam painting as tolerant
or utopic. Its conservatism and repression during this time can be said to denote
the impossibility of building a united church and theology, of completing the
project of Babel. In this alternative reading of the Rotterdam Tower of Babel, its
historical materiality situates a political and historical crisis in the Churchs
authority, not as Babel remedied, but as the ruins of Babel.
B R U E G E L S D I A L E C T I C : B E N J A M I N S D I A L E C T I C
As a testament to the complexity of Breugels paintings of the Tower of Babel to

their internal contradictions and ambiguities, and to the differences between the
two works it is vital that my interpretation of them is maintained, simultaneously, alongside Mansbachs reading. Both readings are supplemental to one
another: contradictory and irreconcilable. The historical and philosophical
differences that they shed on Bruegels Tower of Babel paintings bring to light an
understanding of the works as dialectical. In recognizing this relationship with
Mansbachs work, and the impact that it has on our knowledge of the paintings, I
would like to propose that this dialectic also enables a reciprocal understanding
of Benjamins theory. By this I mean that the analysis of the paintings can be used
to rethink Benjamins notions of allegory and ruins as dialectical in a very
particular way.
In The Origin of German Tragic Drama Benjamin precedes what will become one
of his most famous statements on allegory with the following thoughts:
The word history stands written on the countenance of nature in the characters of transience.
The allegorical physiognomy of the naturehistory, which is put on stage in the Trauerspiel is
213
present in reality in the form of the ruin. In the ruin history has physically merged into the
setting. And in this guise history does not assume the form of the process of an eternal life so
much as that of irresistible decay. Allegory thereby declares itself to be beyond beauty. Allegories are, in the realm of thoughts, what ruins are in the realm of things.47
By holding together Mansbach and my interpretation of Bruegels Tower of Babel

paintings the Vienna version as historical ruins and allegorical; the Rotterdam
work as a philosophical allegory in a state of historical ruins a subtle understanding of the dialectical play between Benjamins allegory and ruins is offered.
The two art-historical readings form necessary parts of a dialectical interpretation. That is, Mansbachs reading of the Vienna painting as historical decay is to
be held alongside my analysis of it as allegorical: as his discussion of the
Rotterdam work as an allegory of a humanist Utopia is to be held alongside my
interpretation of it as historical ruins. This dialectical formation, then, gives me
the tools with which to look back on Benjamins theory of allegory and ruins, and
propose that we consider their relationship to one another differently. I would
like to suggest that we think about the ways in which the dialectic of natural
history, with its reliance on philosophy and history, plays itself out in both
paintings, as a guide with which to consider a dialectical play within Benjamins
theory of allegory and within ruins.
On the one hand, we have seen how ruins are the material embodiment of the
dialectic of natural history. They physically merge into the setting: as materiality,
ruins figure the simultaneous becoming of history and nature as a process of
human history. Ruins present the primacy of the historical and material. On the
other hand, allegory figures the primacy of the philosophical configuration of
natural history.
Although allegory may give primacy to the philosophical and ruins to the
historical as the different interpretations of the paintings have suggested each
element the historical-material, and the philosophical must remain at play in
both paintings, and in the figurations of both allegory and ruins. Like a combined
reading of Bruegels Tower of Babel paintings Mansbach and my own allegory
and ruins can be read as dialectical, representing the historical and philosophical
duality of natural history. As such, allegory and ruins between them form their
own dialectic. This anti-reconciliatory dialectic is central to an understanding of
Bruegels Towers of Babel as both allegory and ruins; and to Benjamins statement
that: Allegories are, in the realm of thoughts, what ruins are in the realm of
things. Ruins then are the historical material of allegorys philosophical idea;
and allegory resides in ruins as ruins reside in allegory.
Notes
I would like to thank Barbara Engh, for discussions about Benjamin many years
ago, Marie Fitzsimmons, Hertha Koettner-Smith, Fred Orton and Marq Smith for
their long-standing and incisive advice and support, and the anonymous readers
sought by the editors of Art History for their thorough and very helpful comments.
I would also like to thank Fintan Cullen for his fine-tuning of the text. The final
stages of this research were funded by the Leverhulme Trust, and Central Saint
Martins College of Art and Design, London.
214
1 Walter Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic

Drama, trans. John Osborne, introduction George
Steiner, London and New York, 1990 (1963), 178.
2 The contradictory aspect of Bruegels work has
been mentioned from as early as 1938 (Charles
De Tolnay, La Seconde tour de Babel de Pierre
Bruegel Lancien, Annuaire des Musees Royaux des
Beaux-Arts, 1938, 11321). However, there is a
noticeable shift in the taking up and using of
these contradictions in more recent debates
around methodology. See, for instance, David
Freedberg, ed., The Prints of Pieter Bruegel the Elder,
Tokyo, 1989; Jan de Jong, et. al., eds, Pieter Bruegel,
Zwolle, 1997; Ethan Matt Kavaler, Pieter Bruegel:
Parables of Order and Enterprise, Cambridge, 1999;
Keith Moxey, Pieter Bruegel and Popular
Culture, in David Freedberg, ed., The Prints of
Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 4252; Edward Snow,
Meaning in Childrens Games: On the Limitations of the Iconographic Approach to Bruegel,
Representations, 1:2, Spring 1983, 2760; Edward
A. Snow, The Language of Contradiction in
Bruegels Tower of Babel, Res, 5, Spring 1983, 408;
Edward A. Snow, Inside Bruegel: The Play of Images
in Childrens Games, New York, 1997; Perez
Zagorin, Looking for Pieter Bruegel, Journal of
the History of Ideas, 64:1, January 2003, 7396.
3 De Tolnay cites Bertolotti, Giulio Clovio principe dei
miniaturistis (Modena, 1882), who writes, Una
torre di Babilonia fatta di avolio di Mro Pietro
Brugole: Charles Tolnay, Pierre Bruegel lancien,
Brussels, 1935, 80.
4 As well as the biblical narrative, see, for example,
Arrian of Nicomedia, Anabasis, trans. Aubrey de
Selincourt, Harmondsworth, 1971; Herodutus,
The History of Herodotus, vol. 1, trans. George
Rawlinson, S.I., 1927 (1910); Flavius Josephus,
Antiquities of the Jews, trans. Ralph Marcus, ed.
Allen Wilkgren, Cambridge, MA, 1998. Wazbinski
considers this tradition, rather than the biblical
one, as the antecedent for Bruegels Vienna
painting (Zygmunt Wazbinski, La construction
de la Tour de Babel par Bruegel le Vieux, Bulletin
du Musee National de Varsovie, 3:4, 1992, 44177).
See also Klamt for a consideration of the
Rotterdam Tower of Babel as a critique of the Curia
and Rome, by way of Augustine, who aligns
Rome with Babylon in his Civitas Dei (JohannChristian Klamt, Anmerkungen zu Pieter Bruegels Babel-Darstellungen, in Pieter Bruegel und
Seine Welt, eds Otto von Simson and Matthias
Winner, Berlin, 1979, 4350).
5 Jacques Derrida, Des Tours de Babel, in Difference
in Translation, ed., trans., and notes Joseph F.
Graham, Ithaca and New York, 1985, 165207.
6 Snow, The Language of Contradiction, 43.
7 Wazbinski, La construction de la Tour de Babel,
116.
8 See, for instance, Walter S. Gibson Mirror of the
Earth The World of Landscape in Sixteenth Century
Flemish Painting, Princeton, 1989, 67; and S.A.
Mansbach, Pieter Bruegels Towers of Babel,
Zeitschrift fur Kunstgeschichte, 45:1, 1982, 4356, 47.
9 Mansbach, Pieter Bruegels Towers of Babel, 49

and 523. See also Joanne Morra, Translation
into Art History, Parallax, 14, January 2000,
12938.
10 Gibson, Mirror of the Earth, 67.
11 Quoted in H. Arthur Klein and Mina Klein, Pieter
Bruegel the Elder: Artist of Abundance, New York,
1968, 12.
12 Snow, The Language of Contradiction, 41.
13 Fritz Grossmann, Bruegel: The Paintings, London,
1955, 195.
14 Mansbach, Pieter Bruegels Towers of Babel, 43.
23 Mansbach, Pieter Bruegels Towers of Babel, 49
(all quotations).
24 Benjamin, Origin of German Tragic Drama, 167.
25 Samuel Weber, Genealogy of Modernity: History,
Myth and Allegory in Benjamins Origin of the
German Mourning Play, MLN, 106, 1991, 465500,
4678.
27 Benjamin, Origin of German Tragic Drama, 46. In
this book Benjamins thoughts on the dialectic
are tied up with his discussion of origin. I have
elided the question of origin so as to simplify
what is, in Benjamins writings, an already
complex analysis of the natural history dialectic
and its relationship to history, materiality and
philosophy.
29 Rose-Marie Hagen and Rainer Hagen, Pieter
Bruegel the Elder, c.15251569: Peasants, Fools and
Demons, Cologne, 1994, 18.
32 Henry Kamen, Philip of Spain, New Haven and
London, 1997, 220.
33 On Philip IIs reign, see, for example, Kamen,
Philip; H.G. Koenigsberger, Estates and Revolutions:
Essays in Early Modern European History, Ithaca,
1971; David Loth, Philip II of Spain, London, 1932;
Geoffrey Parker, Philip II, London, 1979; Sir
Charles Petrie, Philip II of Spain, London, 1963;
Pieter Pierson, Philip II of Spain, London, 1975;
William Thomas Walsh, Philip II, London and New
York, 1937.
34 On the religious controversies during the Reformation, see Alastair Duke, Salvation by Coercion: The Controversy Surrounding the Inquisition in the Low Countries on the Eve of the
Revolt, in Reformation Principle and Practice: Essays
in Honour of Arthur Geoffrey Dickens, ed. Peter
Newman Brooks, London, 1980, 13556; Alastair
215
Duke, Building Heaven in Hells Despite: The

Early History of the Reformation in the Towns of
the Low Countries, in Britain and the Netherlands,
vol. 7, Church and State Since the Reformation, eds
A.C. Duke and C.A. Tamse, The Hague, 1981, 45
75; Alastair Duke, Reformation and Revolution in the
Low Countries, London and Ronceverte, 1990;
Alastair Duke, Gillian Lewis and Andrew Pettegree, eds and trans., The Netherlands, in
Calvinism in Europe 15401610: A Collection of Documents, Manchester and New York, 1992, 12981; G.
Groenhuis, Calvinism and National Consciousness: The Dutch Republic as the New Israel, in
Britain and the Netherlands, vol, 7, Church and State
Since the Reformation, eds Duke and Tamse, 118
33; Carter Lindberg, The European Reformations,
Oxford and Cambridge, MA, 1996; Phyllis Mack
Crew, Calvinist Preaching and Iconoclasm in the
Netherlands 15441569, Cambridge, 1978; Guido
Marnef, Antwerp in the Age of Reformation: Underground Protestantism in a Commercial Metropolis,
15501577, trans. J.C. Grayson, Baltimore and
London, 1996.
35 H.G. Koenigsberger, Orange, Granvelle and
Philip II, Bijdragen en Medelingen Betraffende de
Geschiedemis der Nederlanden, 99, 1984, 57395, 588.
36 On Philip IIs representation within the Netherlands and opposition to it, see Koenigsberger,
Orange, Granvelle and Philip II; H.G. Koenigsberger, The Beginnings of the States General of
the Netherlands, Parliaments, Estates and Representation, 8:2, December 1988, 101114; H.F.K. van
Nierop, The Nobility of Holland: From Knights to
Regents, 15001650, trans. Maarten Ultee,
Cambridge, 1993 (1984); James D. Tracy, Holland
Under Habsburg Rule, 15061566: The Formation of a
Body Politic, Berkeley, 1990; Guy Edward Wells,
Antwerp and the Government of Philip II 1557
1567, PhD diss., Cornell University, 1982.
216

38 Kamen, Philip, 115.
39 Martin van Gelderen, The Political Thought of the
Dutch Revolt 15551590, Cambridge, 1992; H.G.
Koenigsberger, Why did the States General of
the Netherlands Become Revolutionary in the
Sixteenth Century, Parliaments, Estates and
Representation, 2/2, 1982, 103111; E.H. Kossman
and A.F. Mellink, eds, Texts Concerning the Revolt of
the Netherlands, Cambridge, 1974, 5388; Irving L.
Zupnick, Bruegel and the Revolt of the Netherlands, Art Journal, 23:4, 1964, 2839.
40 Alva to Philip II, 29 February 1568, in Epistolario
Alba, 2: 334, quoted in Marnef, Antwerp in the Age
of Reformation, xi.
41 Quoted in Kamen, Philip, 1256.
42 Hagen and Hagen, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 21.
43 Mansbach, Pieter Bruegels Towers of Babel,
53.
44 See, for instance, Paul Arblaster, Totius Mundi
Emporium: Antwerp as a Center for Vernacular
Bible Translations 15231545, in The Low Countries as a Crossroads of Religious Beliefs, eds Arie-Jan
Gelderblom, Jan L. de Jong and Marc van Vaeck,
Leiden, 2004, 931; W. Schwarz, Principles and
Problems of Biblical Translation: Some Reformation
Controversies and Their Background, Cambridge,
1955.
45 G.R. Evans, Problems of Authority in the Reformation
Debates, Cambridge, 1992, 512.
46 The Rotterdam panel may have been trimmed on
all sides: see Friso Lammerste, Pieter Bruegel the
Elder. The Tower of Babel, in 14001550, Van Eyck
to Bruegel: Dutch and Flemish Painting in the Collection of the Museum Boymans-Van Beuningen,
Rotterdam, Rotterdam, 1994, 400403.

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UTOPIA LOST: ALLEGORY, RUINS AND PIETER

BRUEGELS TOWERS OF BABEL

ART HISTORY . ISSN 0141-6790 . VOL 30 NO 2 . APRIL 2007 pp 198-216

& ASSOCIATION OF ART HISTORIANS 2007

the methodological concerns it elicits; as well as Benjamins oft-quoted statement

& ASSOCIATION OF ART HISTORIANS 2007

& ASSOCIATION OF ART HISTORIANS 2007

& ASSOCIATION OF ART HISTORIANS 2007

MANSBACHS TOWERS OF BABEL

Like many liberal-minded Catholics and Protestant intellectuals some of

& ASSOCIATION OF ART HISTORIANS 2007

The failure is unmitigated. A transformation of nature and the natural order

Thus, in Mansbachs view, the references to individual personality and power

As for the crisis in theological authority brought on by humanist and Reformist

bucolic landscape the natural world seemingly unburdened by any signs of

Mansbachs reading of Bruegels Tower of Babel paintings juxtaposes the two

& ASSOCIATION OF ART HISTORIANS 2007

In other words, the king is representative of both an historical and divine

& ASSOCIATION OF ART HISTORIANS 2007

In an inversion of Mansbachs interpretation of the Rotterdam Tower of Babel (plate

& ASSOCIATION OF ART HISTORIANS 2007

& ASSOCIATION OF ART HISTORIANS 2007

As a testament to the complexity of Breugels paintings of the Tower of Babel to

By holding together Mansbach and my interpretation of Bruegels Tower of Babel

& ASSOCIATION OF ART HISTORIANS 2007

1 Walter Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic

9 Mansbach, Pieter Bruegels Towers of Babel, 49

Duke, Building Heaven in Hells Despite: The

37 Benjamin, Origin of German Tragic Drama, 66.

& ASSOCIATION OF ART HISTORIANS 2007

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