La Torre di Babele

Ten years or so before he painted this, Bruegel had crossed the Alps into Italy and drawn the ruins of Rome, and it shows. His Tower of Babel is built like the Colosseum, arch stacked on Roman arch, already cracking and leaning as it climbs into the clouds. He signed and dated it 1563 and made it for Nicolaes Jonghelinck, a rich Antwerp merchant. Antwerp itself is part of the point. In the 1560s it was the busiest port in Europe, crowded with traders speaking every language, exactly the kind of proud, over-reaching, many-tongued city the Genesis story warns about. Look at the base, and the tower is still half-fused to the living rock it stands on, unfinished at the bottom even as the top is being raised.