The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Pieter Bruegel the Elder · the “Great” Tower of Babel · oil on oak panel, about 114 by 155 centimetres · signed and dated 1563 · the Vienna panel, one object painted by one hand and whole; the smaller Tower of Babel in Rotterdam is a separate work · Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Mode
Biblical history told as a building site; the tower of Genesis fused with the Netherlandish world landscape
Mythos
The tower to heaven as human self-sufficiency; Babel as Rome, in the arcades of the Colosseum; Babel as a Flemish port of many tongues
Phase
The building at full work, its upper rings rising while the lower are still raw; dated 1563; the confusion of tongues not yet come
Presentation
Oil on oak panel, about 114 by 155 centimetres, landscape format; one field, the tower centre and right of centre, a city at the left, a harbour at the right, a king and his masons in the left foreground
Register
Even daylight and mild weather; awe with dread beneath it, held long as fascination with the work
Scale
One king, a building the size of a mountain, a city and a sea
Governing Proposition
A king inspects his masons at the foot of a building cut from a mountain, its unfinished summit in cloud, its base fed by ships and cranes from a working harbour, a city spread small to the horizon beside it. The wager of the panel is that the story of Babel can be told without the confusion of tongues: that a vast human enterprise, each of its thousand tasks done correctly, carries its failure in its own plan, and that the building alone, seen whole and in every part, is enough to say so.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The panel is oil on oak, about 114 by 155 centimetres, signed and dated 1563, and it hangs in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. A tower fills it. Round, ringed with arcades storey on storey, it rises from near the foot of the panel almost to the top edge, taking most of the height and more than half the width, centre and right of centre, and its summit stands in cloud. It is not built on a site; it is built round and into a rock. Where the storeys are unfinished the rock shows through, and the dressed arches stand on it as a skin. The upper rings are rising while the lower ones are still raw. The storeys are not level, and the whole mass leans.
At the right lies a harbour. Ships come in under sail, rafts bring timber and stone, and cranes at the water’s edge lift the loads toward the base. One ship in full sail beside the lowest arcade is a toy against it. On the faces and ledges of the tower the work goes on everywhere, in ladders, huts, ramps and scaffolds, and in treadwheel cranes where men walk to raise the stone: each labour a few millimetres high, and each recognisable. At the left a city spreads at the tower’s foot, its roofs small, and beyond it a lowland and the sea run out to a low horizon in graded blues. The light is daylight and the weather mild. The stone turns from warm in the light to bluish in shadow.
In the left foreground stands a king with his retinue, and before him stonemasons kneel. By the tradition of Genesis commentary he is Nimrod, the builder of Babel. They are the only figures large enough to read as persons, and they are smaller than one of the cranes. They are drawn to a larger scale and in a stiffer, more emblematic manner than anything else on the panel, a group set in front of the world it commands. The king stands below his work and sees less of it than the viewer, who looks from high above. What the panel does not show is the event the story is known for. No one speaks in strange tongues, and no one is scattered. The building is at full work.
Movement II
The subject is Genesis 11: one people with one speech set out to build a city and a tower whose top would reach heaven, and the tower was left unfinished when their speech was confounded and they were scattered over the earth. In manuscript and in print before Bruegel, Babel was a square or stepped tower, small beside its builders, and the pictures led with the intervention: the divine event, the confusion of speech, the dispersal. Beside that stood the Netherlandish world landscape of Patinir and his followers, a high view over a panorama of rivers, rocks and towns with a small subject somewhere within it. Both stood before Bruegel, and both are in this panel.
He turned them. The tower was made round and Roman: its rings of arcades are the Colosseum, which he had seen in Rome. It was made the size of a geography, so that the world landscape is no longer the setting of the subject but the building’s site, the mountain cut into a tower and the panorama spread at its foot. The divine event was removed, and the story is told by construction alone. And the knowledge of building, the cranes, the scaffolds, the supply of stone by water, was made the content of a sacred subject. Each of these is a departure from the image the subject had carried, and together they make a different picture of it: the story told through the world as it is worked.
The stake was smaller than the turn. This was a panel for a private collection, in a city that valued learned allegory, by a painter already established, and nothing in it risked his standing. The turn is real, and it is a turn in a subject, not in what painting could be. The Swerve stands at 8.6, a tenth above the gate, for that reason, and Pressure on Tradition at the same figure for a related one. The round tower became the type of the subject: the Babel of later painting, of illustration, of cinema and of posters is Bruegel’s tower. That is reach in one iconography. Bruegel’s larger reach in painting belongs to his peasant scenes and his Months, and this panel, long in imperial keeping, did not carry it.
Movement III
What the panel brings into the open can be stated. A vast human enterprise fails from inside its own making, not by a blow from outside. Bruegel puts the failure where it can be seen, in the building. The core is native rock and the finish a skin; the upper storeys rise while the lower are still raw; the storeys are not level, and the tower leans. Every task on it is done correctly: each crane lifts, each mason cuts, each ship delivers. The fault is in no single task. It is in the plan, and in the scale the plan demands, which no coordination of correct tasks can make sound. Ambition on this scale carries its failure with it, and the panel shows the failure as work in progress.
A second image runs through the first. The king stands at the foot of the work with his retinue, and the masons kneel to him. He is the will that orders the whole, and the whole is borne by labour he cannot see from where he stands. The viewer, set high above, sees more of his project than he does: the harbour feeding it, the rock showing through it, the lean. The meaning is reached by inference from the structure rather than shown in an act, and The Unconcealment is held at 8.7 for that: what the panel says, it says through what it builds.
The archetype is built, not cited. The tower to heaven is the image of human self-sufficiency, and Bruegel makes it of a mountain, at the place where nature ends and the made begins: the rock is the core, the arcades are the finish, and the unfinished summit meets the cloud. The architecture carries a second archetype. The arcades are Rome’s, so Babel is also Rome, the empire and the church that inherited its stones; and the city at the tower’s foot is a Flemish port, Antwerp in all but name, a market of many tongues. The particulars stay particular: a treadwheel, a mallet, a hull. The text gives the archetype before the painting builds it, and the painting’s own structure, failure from within, carries one archetype rather than a system of them. The Archetypal Deep stands at 8.9.
Movement IV
The architecture is drawn. Hundreds of arches are set in perspective round a curved mass, and the courses of stone and the openings stay consistent from the base to the cloud. That consistency is what makes the lean read as a fault in the building and not as a slip of the painter’s hand: a builder’s error, shown by a draughtsman who makes none. Against the mass the miniaturist works at the scale of millimetres. Each figure on the tower does a recognisable task, walking in the wheels of the cranes, carrying, hewing, climbing, and the machinery is observed exactly. The number of these labours is charged, not credited: they are a density rather than a structure, and a third of them could be other labours without the panel knowing less.
The form holds two scales at once, and the knowledge of the panel is in holding them. From a standing distance the tower is a single mass leaning in cloud, turning from warm stone in light to bluish shadow, with the distance at the left running out in graded blues. At the distance of a hand the surface becomes a field of separate tasks, each legible and none aware of the whole. The whole and its failure are made of an endless number of correct small acts, and only a form that shows both the mass and the acts can say so. A print would keep the drawing and lose the atmosphere that sets the mass in air. A larger canvas would lose the scale that makes each labourer a figure. The high viewpoint belongs to the knowledge: the viewer sees what the king below cannot.
Everything on the panel obeys one law: it is a function of the building. The king is there to command it, the masons kneel as its labour, the city gives its scale, the harbour its supply, the rock its core, the cloud its goal; even the rowers and the sails are hauling stone. The range runs from one hand to a geography, and it holds. The cost is in the foreground. The king’s group is drawn larger, stiffer and in a more emblematic manner than the rest, the most conventional passage on the panel, and it sits on the form somewhat as a separate scene, a stage in front of a world. The law reaches it by meaning, not by handling. The Made stands at 9.4 and The Inner Law at 9.1 with that charge made; Las Meninas, at 9.2, where the making is itself the subject, stands above on The Made at 9.8.
Movement V
The panel has lasted 463 years whole. It is one panel, legible in every passage that carries its meaning, and no part of it is known to be lost. It was held in collections of rank from its first years and seen by a narrow public for about two centuries; it has hung publicly in Vienna since, and for the last century it has been seen as widely as any Northern painting. Oak moves with climate, and panels of this age have all needed conservation; only that general risk is charged. Its costumes and machines are of 1563. Building beyond one’s means is not, and nothing on the surface stands between the work and a viewer who knows neither Genesis nor Antwerp. The Imperishable stands at 9.4.
The readings have widened in the last century rather than closed. The panel has been read as an emblem of pride; as an image against Rome, the Colosseum standing for the seat of persecution and of the papacy; as a picture of Antwerp’s commerce and its many tongues; as a mirror of Habsburg imperial building; and as a study of engineering for its own sake. Why the confusion of tongues is absent, whether the lean records a fault the builders made or one the painter saw coming, and how this tower argues with the smaller, darker tower in Rotterdam are still open. The surface can be read for an hour. Much of that return is detail rather than a meaning that deepens, and The Bottomless Well stands at 9.0.
Beside it on the desk stands The Hunters in the Snow, at 8.7, painted by the same hand two years later, on the same support, at nearly the same size, and hanging in the same museum. Babel stands above it on The Unconcealment, The Archetypal Deep, The Bottomless Well, The Imperishable, The Made, The Inner Law and The Encompassed; the Hunters above it on The Inevitable; the two level on the other four. The widest difference that is argued is the archetype: the Hunters build the homecoming and leave the year as atmosphere, where Babel’s archetype is the subject and is built twice. The Starry Night stands level at 8.9. Every summit condition is met here, and the twelve average 8.87: the panel is held below the summit by its aggregate alone. In Vienna the work goes on, ring above ring, and the cloud still touches the unfinished top.
Act III · The Twelve
Judged on the configuration, since the panel has no words. The tower cannot go, nor the rock it is cut into: the building swallows a mountain, and that is half the argument. The harbour cannot go: ships, rafts and cranes feed stone and timber to the base, so the tower is supplied by a living economy and not by a miracle. The city cannot go, since it gives the tower its scale. The king and the kneeling masons cannot go: the only figures large enough to read as persons, they are the will that orders the whole. What gives is the detail. The small labours are each true, but their number is a density rather than a structure: a third of them could be other labours and the panel would know the same thing.
Score: 8.6 / 10
What can be stated: a vast human enterprise fails from inside its own making, not by a blow from outside. Bruegel leaves out the scene the tradition led with, the confusion of tongues and a people scattered, and paints a building site at full work. The disclosure is in the building. The storeys are not level and the tower leans; the upper rings rise while the lower are still raw; the core is native rock and the finish a skin. Ambition on this scale, coordinated perfectly at the level of each task, carries its failure in the plan. A second image runs through it: the king’s project is borne by labour he cannot see from where he stands. Held below the top because the meaning is reached by inference from the structure.
Score: 8.7 / 10
The elevation is grandeur of the most literal kind, a made thing the size of a mountain with its top in cloud, and in one panel it rises more than once. First the mass, filling the field over a low horizon. Then the summit, the unfinished upper ring, where the cloud touches the building at the sky it was meant to reach. Then the scale: a ship in full sail at the base is a toy against the lowest arcade. Then the distance at the left, a lowland city and sea running out to the horizon, so that the tower stands over a world. The register is awe with dread beneath it. Held below the top because the light is even and the weather mild, and close looking turns the sublime into fascination with process, a lower register held for longer.
Score: 8.8 / 10
Myth built, and load-bearing. Genesis 11 is the subject, but the picture constructs the archetype rather than illustrating it: the tower to heaven as the image of human self-sufficiency, made of a mountain, at the place where nature ends and the made begins. A second archetype is built into the architecture. The ring of arcades is Roman, the Colosseum Bruegel had seen in Rome, so Babel is also Rome, the empire and the church that inherited its stones; and the city at its foot is a Flemish port, Antwerp in all but name, a market of many tongues. The particulars stay particular. Held a step below the top because the text gives the archetype before the painting builds it, and the panel’s structure carries one archetype rather than a system of them.
Score: 8.9 / 10
The inheritance: Babel in manuscript and print as a square or stepped tower, small beside its builders, with the divine intervention, the dispersal or the confusion of speech as the event; and the world landscape of Patinir and his followers, a high view over a panorama. The turn: the tower made round and Roman, and the size of a geography, so the landscape is no longer a setting but the building’s site; the divine event removed, so the story is told by construction alone; the knowledge of building, its cranes, scaffolds and supply of stone, made the content of a sacred subject. The stake is modest: a panel for a private collection, by a painter already established, which risked nothing of his standing. The axis clears the gate by a tenth for that reason.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Change the form and the panel loses much of what it knows: that the whole and its failure are made of an endless number of correct small acts. This form holds both scales at once. From a standing distance the tower is a single mass leaning in cloud; at the distance of a hand the surface is a field of separate tasks, each legible, none aware of the whole. A print would keep the drawing and lose the atmosphere that sets the mass in air; a larger canvas would lose the miniaturist’s scale that makes each labourer a figure. The high viewpoint is knowledge too: the king stands below and sees less than the viewer does. Held below the top because the foreground group, larger and differently scaled, sits on the form somewhat as a separate scene.
Score: 8.9 / 10
Evidence over promise, across 463 years, and the readings have widened in the last century rather than closed. The panel has been read as a moral emblem of pride; as an image against Rome, the Colosseum standing for the seat of persecution and of the papacy; as a picture of Antwerp’s commerce and its many tongues; as a mirror of Habsburg imperial building; and as a study of engineering for its own sake. Why the confusion of tongues does not appear, whether the lean records a fault the builders made or one the painter saw coming, and how the Vienna and Rotterdam towers argue with each other all stay open. Held a step below the top because much of the return is detail rather than a meaning that deepens.
Score: 9.0 / 10
Field: Netherlandish painting of the 1560s, Antwerp above all. Force and reach are scored together. The intrinsic force is the reorganisation of one subject and a contribution to another: the biblical narrative told through the world as it is worked, and the architectural fantasy fused with the world landscape. That is real, and it is not a reorganisation of what painting could be. The discount: the panel spent most of its life in imperial keeping, and Bruegel’s larger reach in painting belongs to the peasant scenes and the Months, not to this panel. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: the round, Roman, mountain-sized tower became the type of the subject, and it has stood for Babel since, in illustration, cinema and posters.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Weighed on form, then presence, then fabric, at 463 years. Form: whole, one panel, legible in every passage that carries the meaning; no part is known to be lost, and none is charged. Presence: in collections of rank from its first years, seen by a narrow public for about two centuries, then on public view in Vienna, and for the last century as widely seen as any Northern painting. Fame is presence, not proof, and lifts the figure only a little. Fabric: oil on oak, a support that moves with climate; panels of this age have all needed conservation, and only that general risk is charged. The costumes and machines are of 1563; building beyond one’s means is not. In the band for centuries with form whole, at its middle.
Score: 9.4 / 10
Command of oil on an oak panel a little over a metre and a half wide, to the same anchors as any medium, and the making is load-bearing. Architecture: hundreds of arches drawn in perspective round a curved mass, the courses of stone and the openings consistent from base to cloud, so that the lean reads as a fault in the building and not as a slip of the hand. Scale: figures a few millimetres high, each doing a recognisable task, beside a mountain-sized mass set in air. Atmosphere: the tower turns from warm stone in light to bluish shadow, and the distance at the left runs out in graded blues. Machinery observed exactly: treadwheel cranes, scaffolds, rafts. The cost is the foreground group, stiffer than the rest and the most conventional passage on the panel.
Score: 9.4 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: the king in his robes at the lower left, the one figure the story names, and the cloud at the summit. They obey one law: everything on the panel is a function of the building. The king is there to command it; the masons kneel because they are its labour; the city is its scale, the harbour its supply, the rock its core, the cloud its goal. Even the rowers and the sails are hauling stone. The range runs from a single hand to a geography, from sea to sky, from labour to sovereignty, and it holds. What resists is the foreground group, drawn larger and in a more emblematic manner, a stage in front of a world: the law reaches it by meaning rather than by handling.
Score: 9.1 / 10
The orders held: the state, in the king and his retinue; labour, on every level of the tower; commerce, in the harbour and its ships; the city, in the dwellings at the tower’s foot; the natural order, in the rock, the sea, the weather and the horizon; the sacred, in the story’s defiance of heaven; history, in the Roman arcades that make Babel an image of empire and its ruin; technology, in the cranes. They are integrated, because one building ties each to the others. What holds this lowest axis at 8.4 is what is absent: the family; the inner life, since no face can be read and no figure thinks; and the body in pleasure or in suffering. A world held as a mechanism rather than as a society of persons.
Score: 8.4 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.9 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Made at 9.4, The Imperishable at 9.4 and The Inner Law at 9.1. Hundreds of arches held in consistent perspective round a curved mass, so that the lean reads as the building’s fault and not the painter’s; a panel whole after 463 years; and one law, that everything is a function of the building, running from the king’s robes to the cloud at the summit.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 8.4: the state, labour, commerce, the city, the natural order, the sacred, history and technology are tied together by one building, while the family, the inner life and the body are absent. Below the rest, The Inevitable, The Swerve and Pressure on Tradition at 8.6: the small labours are a density rather than a structure, the turn in the subject risked nothing, and the reach of the round tower is reach in one subject, while Bruegel’s reach in painting belongs to other panels.
The Necessity Cap clears at 8.6 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears with room: The Living Form at 8.9, The Made at 9.4, The Inner Law at 9.1, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is met on all five: The Imperishable at 9.4, The Archetypal Deep at 8.9, The Unconcealment at 8.7, The Swerve at 8.6 and Pressure on Tradition at 8.6 clear the bar of 8.5, the last two by a tenth. The Universal Minimum is met (no axis but The Encompassed falls below 8.6, against 7.5) and The Encompassed, which is exempted, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 8.4. The twelve sum to 106.4, an average of 8.87 that displays 8.9, below the 9.0 the summit requires. Every summit condition is met; the work is held below the summit by its aggregate alone.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of the panel as an image (its composition, its groups, the harbour, the city and the devices of construction), and less closely of it as a physical object; not from standing before it, and no image or written source was consulted. The work scored is the Vienna panel, the “Great” Tower of Babel: oil on oak, about 114 by 155 centimetres, signed and dated 1563, in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, one object painted by one hand, and whole. Nothing in it is known to be lost, replaced, transferred or remade, and nothing stands in place of an original. Not in the unit, and neither scored nor credited: the smaller, darker Tower of Babel in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, a separate work, cited only where the comparison shows what the Vienna panel chose; and the later paintings of Babel in Bruegel’s form, which are reception. No words are quoted: the signature and date are not transcribed, and Genesis is paraphrased. Facts that could not be verified are not given, among them the place and wording of the signature, the date of the Rotterdam panel, any earlier version of the subject by Bruegel, the names of the panel’s early owners and the date from which it was shown publicly, the names of the painters who repeated its form, the number of storeys and of figures, the panel’s conservation record, and the cause of the lean in the setting of the arches.