Building of the Tower of Babel

Around 1550 the Tower of Babel became a favourite subject of Flemish painters, and the likely reason sat just outside the frame. Antwerp, where this panel was made, was then the busiest port in northern Europe, its streets full of merchants speaking a dozen languages. The Bible story of a tower left unfinished when human speech was scattered would have felt close to home. Hendrick van Cleve III built his reputation on exactly this kind of vast imagined architecture. The tower here rises on a square base, ramps and open galleries still under construction so you can see into the half-built interior, with two roads crossing toward the site. For a long time dozens of such Babels hung under his name. Scholars have since given most of them to a group of unidentified Antwerp painters so close in style they are simply called the Hendrick van Cleve III group. Only about three are now held to be securely his.